Rhetorics of Fantasy is a non-fiction book by British academic Farah Mendlesohn. It was published in April 2008 by Wesleyan University Press. In Rhetorics of Fantasy, Mendlesohn proposed four classifications for fantasy literature: portal quest, immersive, intrusive, and liminal fantasy. Each classification discusses around twenty fantasy novels.
The book was a significant contribution to literary studies, particularly with regards to fantasy and genre fiction. It changed the focus of fantasy scholarship from debates over narrative material to exploring content structurally, considering the reader's experience and expectations alongside those of the protagonist.
Rhetorics of Fantasy is literary criticism incorporating thought from rhetorics, narratology, and semiotics. Mendlesohn's work centres a reader's experience instead of assigning thematic or historical groupings to fantasy works.[2] It is descriptive scholarly writing, not prescriptive—i.e., it is Mendlesohn observes how things are and not what they must be.[3][4] A key contention by Mendlesohn is that fantasy novels are more effective when the conventions used is appropriate to the reader's expectations for that category.[5]
Rhetorics of Fantasy outlines four classifications for the genre: portal-quest, immersive, intrusive, and liminal fantasy.[2] Mendlesohn analyses, through close reading, around twenty novels per section.[6] Each of the four rhetorical modes has stylistic and narrative techniques associated. Mendlesohn contends that a work of immersive fantasy using the style of portal fantasy will feel "leaden".[4]
Portal-quest
In portal-quest fantasy, the protagonist enters an Otherworld that is unexplained to the character and to the reader.[7] Character and reader experience the world alongside one another, learning from a guide.[8] The novel's language prevents the reader from establishing strong opinions about the narrative other than what has been presented to them. The narrator's thoughts about the world become part of the reader's knowledge base—Mendlesohn calls this reverie.[2]
Mendlesohn contends that most portal quests are also quest fantasies. Mendlesohn argues that there is so much narrativistic and stylistic overlap with both that they are equivalent in practice.[9] An example of this is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis.[7]
Mendlesohn explores the equivalence of portal-quest fantasy by discussing The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien.[10] Mendlesohn identifies the hobbits' departure from the Shire, leaving every day reality, as the portal constituent,[11] and that the quest to destroy power.[12]
Immersive fantasy
In immersive fantasy, the reader is treated as though they are from the world.[11] In works of immersive fantasy, the fantastic is typical for both protagonist and reader.[3] There is no attempt by the author to construct wonder; readers construct the wondrous world by encountering it.[11] These works have worlds characterised by entrancing detail.[2]
In intrusive fantasy, the fantastic brings chaos, which does not need to be negative. Usually, the fantasy world and reality are clearly delineated from one another.[13] An otherwordly invader enters the protagonist's life and forcibly takes them to the fantastic world.[14] The language emphasises what the reader can see, hear, smell or touch, and not what they know.[14]
One of Mendlesohn's examples is the arc of Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)—she leaves her own social group and moves towards the threat posed by Dracula.[14][15] Mendlesohn also cites the work of H. P. Lovecraft; and parallels of this category with how a village's social fabric is disrupted by a murder in detective fiction.[16]
Liminal fantasy
In the fourth category of liminal fantasy, the reader or character is invited into the fantastic but refuses or is not capable of doing so.[16] This hesitation is related to the fantastic hesitation described by literary critic Tzvetan Todorov,[17][16] but Mendlesohn selected liminal because Todorov's hesitation seemed too narrow.[18] This category is the most likely to cross genre boundaries.[17]
Mendlesohn devotes a chapter to exploring narratives that may sit beyond the four categories.[20] Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) may in some ways be immersive, but Clarke effectively deploys the rhetorical strategies of intrusive fantasy.[21]
Reception
Rhetorics of Fantasy was well received by reviewers. Michael Swanwick and John Clute regarded the book as very good.[3] Clute concluded his positive review in Strange Horizons by saying "structure of our reading of fantasy will never be the same again"; Clute criticised some of Mendlesohn's text selections as examples, particularly John Bunyan's 17th-century The Pilgrim's Progress for exploring portal fantasy.[22] In a review for the American journal Science Fiction Studies, Michael Levy said Mendlesohn's work was of the same calibre as the influential works of fantasy scholarship that had influenced it.[3] Ida Yoshinaga called her reader-centric approach "a major contribution to fantasy studies".[6]
Scholars have utilised Mendlesohn's theories to other works, including A Song of Ice and Fire.[23]
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