Rhetorics of Fantasy by Mendlesohn Farah

Author:Mendlesohn, Farah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 2013-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

So what conclusions can we draw? More than any other form described here, the intrusion fantasy holds true to the unreasoning delights of fancy eschewing the rules and rigors of fantasy. This disregard for the rules is one reason why the protagonist/reader position can be summarized as “confused.”The generically irrational fantastic keeps the protagonist/reader off balance, and without control of the situation (even when such control is posited as part of his eventual destiny). This approach clearly departs from the control structures of the portal-quest fantasies, which are precisely about being in charge of the adventure.

The intrusion fantasy is Baconian in its worldview, dependent on the evidence of the senses. Unlike the portal-quest fantasies, it distrusts what is written down or what is told. Unlike the immersive fantasies, its fundamental irrationality and fanciful nature means that what is “known to the inhabitants” is necessarily wrong. The intrusion fantasy constructs a rhetoric in which the shiver up the spine is more trustworthy than scientific discourse; when it adopts apparent scientific rigor, it is always a pseudoscience that clothes feelings in faux analysis.

The intrusion fantasy separates or slices the protagonist and the reader from the world. Frequently (although not always), the reader/protagonist stands observing the effect of the intrusion upon the world—which is why so many of the protagonists seem passive. They do not regard themselves as wholly of the world (or of the common herd). The form’s political stance repudiates responsibility, while positing the importance of the protagonist. It is tied up in a dance of intimacy and repulsion, in which we do not always know who is the ravisher and who the ravished. That very lack of clarity creates a mask for an often vicious colonialist attitude to the Other.

The intrusion fantasy is aural and musical. As the closest descendant from the ghost story or fairy tale told around the fire, the intrusion fantasy depends for its effect on the tempo of the tale, the constant seesawing between latency and escalation. As with the oral tale, it is the degree to which latency is achieved that secures the impact of the escalation; thus any baroque language is generally reserved for the pause, for the holding back. The intrusion itself may be rendered more frightening by the sudden shift to the prosaic.

The intrusion fantasy is hologrammatic. Each scene (often each paragraph), contains within it the tempo of the intrusion fantasy. Where the portal-quest fantasy is a fantasy of the world Re-made or of Healing, the intrusion fantasy is a fantasy of entropy and resistance to entropy.

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