Sorry for my long silence. Part of it has been editing, but a large part has been family developments that have limited my time and attention span. Things look like they’re calming down, somewhat anyway, and so I’m back to annoy you with ruminations about Ann Swinfen’s In Defence of Fantasy.
We’re past all the throat-clearing and into the meat of Swinfen’s analysis, which is one of the first serious critical discussions of fantasy literature. Published as it was in 1984 but with an analytic cut-off date of earlier than that, probably closer to 1981, the book is admittedly dated, but it’s important because it’s an early attempt to consider fantasy literature as a serious art form. That last clause sounds nonsensical now, but in 1980 fantasy was neither popular nor serious (and no small number of critics still drawing breath haven’t changed their minds in the intervening forty years). Therefore, in my discussion, I try to keep in mind Swinfen’s historic position: among the first critics groping to form a vocabulary for a literary form that was new. In other words, I’m trying to read with sympathy for her position even as there are elements to her arguments that drive me batty. She’s a product of her time. Have to keep that in mind—she is a product of her time.
And on that subject, I’ve thought considerably about Swinfen’s selection of texts for analysis. Many of them—very many of them—are children’s books, which cuts against her thesis that fantasy is a form for mature readers. As we’ve discussed before, especially in last time’s comments, it can’t be that she was unaware of writers like Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Stephen Donaldson, Mary Stewart, Katherine Kurtz, Anne McCaffrey, Patricia A. McKillip, and many more. There has to be a reason she excluded so many novels from the 1960s and 1970s, works that are today considered canonical; it’s inconceivable that a critic of fantasy would not have read them, even in 1981.
I suspect it had more to do with the audience Swinfen envisioned would read her book, and what those readers would accept as legitimate source material. Why would she squander the chance to lay down a marker for fantasy as a serious art form by discussing novels that common wisdom of the time considered trashy, or at least of dubious quality? I mean, we recognize the stature of earlier novels now, but if you’re of a certain age and you think back about where in the bookstore you could find Moorcock, Kurtz, and McCaffrey back in the day….
In Defence of Fantasy was published by a respectable academic house, Routlege and Kegan Paul, not a powerhouse publisher, but one with a good niche reputation. I suspect that she thought it would be read by teachers and the like, a lay audience, not a specialized one. But even that is fuzzy and I’m not sure she really had an audience firmly in mind, for a reason that segues naturally into this week’s chapter, “Layers of Meaning.”
This chapter, Chapter 5, is relatively brief, and structured along the lines of most critical arguments: the thesis comes first, followed by illustrative examples, and ending with a recap, a restatement of the thesis with a bit of a twist, and that twist is usually a revelatory statement about the subject’s significance. For those of you who remember [or who dread] basic Composition, it’s “tell them what you’re gonna tell them; tell them, with examples; tell ‘em what you told ‘em, and tell ‘em why it’s important.”
“Layers of Meaning” tips off bells in my head, because I’m familiar with medieval levels of analysis: literal, typological, tropological, anagogical, which is enough to induce flashbacks to painful and confusing medieval seminars. Swinfen has no such plan in mind: the layers that interest her are symbolism and allegory. Don’t flee in panic — there’s really very little of what we would recognize as allegory in her discussion. In fact, what she terms allegorical I would reasonably consider to be nothing more than discussion of theme. And symbolism — well, it’s a bare-bones discussion.
The chapter begins with what I think is Swinfen’s greatest contribution to the field of fantasy criticism, followed by a cringe-inducing observation:
Fantasy, being of its nature a form of multivalent writing, naturally makes considerable use of allegory and symbolism. (1, p. 100)
“Multivalent” means possessing different layers of meaning, and the observation is a profound one, one that any reader of fantasy recognizes naturally. Allegory, however, is a specific and proscriptive form of writing that I think Swinfen misapplies and misdefines. After observing that allegory isn’t popular in realism, she writes
[M]odern writing in the allegorical mode, such as that of Kafka, Orwell, Huxley, or Mervyn Peake, tends to reflect the collapse of universal belief and the confusion and fragmentation of moral standards in modern Western society. Such allegories tend to be critical and destructive, rather than emulative and creative. Man is no longer seen as faced with a divinely ordered universe in which he may achieve salvation or damnation through his virtuous adaptation to or sinful rebellion against the God-given plan. Rather he is seen as an individualist who must discover his own morality and defy the man-made structures and hierarchies which are devised to destroy his individual integrity. (1, p. 100)
There are a lot of assumptions to unpack here. Swinfen’s historic frame of reference is a divinely-ordered creation that has not been a subject of universal belief in Europe since Milton set out to justify the ways of God to humanity. Also, if you tripped over Kafka and Peake writing allegories, you’re not alone. But a while ago I mentioned that in her writing Swinfen is searching to apply a vocabulary that hadn’t been settled yet, and narrative arc was a term that I don’t think was in common usage at the time (although, as ever, I could be wrong). Her immediate mental nod toward a deity-level narrative scope grows naturally, (again, I think), from the fantasy writer’s role as world-builder. In fantasy, a writer builds a world that, through detail and verisimilitude, convinces a reader of its reality — the writer holds all the knowledge. In other literary forms, a writer interprets a reality that is common to all people as best as she understands it; in other words, the writer doesn’t hold all knowledge, but gives her best take on reality.
After we’re done tripping over all the awkwardness in Swinfen’s paragraph, the point remains: whether in fantasy or realistic fiction, characters are individuals who define their own morality, figure out what it means to live full lives, and try to live according to their own convictions. Welcome to humanism.
Her introduction to symbolism is equally basic and equally awkward:
In fantasy the symbolic element is in general closely related to the elements of the marvellous, and is used to provide that wider frame of reference…. (1, p. 100)
Quoting Jonathan Raban’s The Technique of Modern Fiction,
a fabric of symbolism may enable the writer to create a moral and intellectual framework for the action of his novel. Symbolism allows an author to link the limited world of his characters to one of the great systems of values, so that we are made to compare the happenings in the novel with their mythological or historical parallels… (1, p. 100)
Pro tip: In any critical book, pay attention to the block quotes. They’re important enough that the author yields space to include them, which means they’re crucial to understanding the discussion. Usually the author will expand upon them or refute them or, rarely, leave them to stand on their own without interpretation. Swinfen leaves this one to stand.
And this is why I suspect she didn’t have a firm idea of her audience: only the most basic of critical books will stop to discuss the importance of symbolism as a concept. It’s one of those givens that we consider common knowledge by the time you leave high school.
Why she so clumsily includes this most basic of fictional concepts in a literary analysis I don’t understand, unless it’s simply to provide an introduction and a way in to her discussion of symbolism in Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, C. S. Lewis’ Narnia (along with a dose of what is admittedly Christian allegory), Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child, Joan North’s The Light Maze, Joy Chant’s Red Moon and Black Mountain, Alan Gardner’s The Owl Service, Theresa Whistler’s The River Boy, Arthur Calder-Marshall’s The Fair to Middling, and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. In all these books, she discusses the controlling symbols (cauldron, Aslan, the Mill on the River, etc.) and the ways they strengthen the narrative arc and underlie character development. This part of the chapter is strongly argued and fluent, even if her terminology is somewhat stilted.
And finally, to the recap and the twist:
One quality is shared by all the books discussed here — a quality to be found in most fantasies, but especially strong in those which employ sustained symbolism or allegory. It is the desire to communicate to the reader a vision of some kind of transcendent reality. (1, p. 121)
Tolkien, in “On Fairy Stories” writes of “recovery,” that quality in fantasy that returns the reader to everyday life with fresh perspective and renewed wonder in the commonplace. I think Swinfen’s “transcendent reality” is more akin to Tolkien’s recovery of perspective than to Plato’s World of Forms.
In all, the “Layers of Meaning” chapter is basic fare — very basic fare — better for its discussion of individual novels than for its overarching commentary. Next up is “Experience Liberated.” It’s been a couple of years since I read it and I don’t remember exactly what it’s about, but it’ll be next week (if all remains calm — and I sincerely hope that all remains calm.) Till then, see you in comments—
Previous Installments
Reference
1. Ann Swinfen, In Defence of Fantasy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.