C.S. Lewis on Misunderstanding Fantasy Essay -- Biography Biographies

C.S. Lewis on Misunderstanding Fantasy â€Å"Good stories often introduce the marvelous or supernatural and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood as this.† On Stories—C.S. Lewis The early decades of the last century saw the loss of credibility of fantasy literature among the academic elite who ruled it a popular genre with little to no scholarly merit. Little that had had the misfortune of being dubbed fantasy had escaped the blacklist cast upon the field. Many critics had also labeled the fantasy genre as largely clichà ©, full of shallow characters, and as having no value beyond being purely escapist entertainment. These generic labels, applied wholesale to fantastic literature, had pushed it off the radar until readers of Fantasy had become literary lepers, lurking in the corners of accepted literary societies. Recent big screen blockbusters such as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and its sequel, The Two Towers, as well as the two Harry Potter films have restored much attention to the oft-ignored genre. Despite the commercial success of the two fantastical franchises, however, Fantasy has not regained much standing within the academia, as scholars continue to neglect contemporary fantasy literature when choosing curricula and fail to give the genre its due while unwittingly including much that is fantastic in classical literature courses. Although these classics have been accepted, they have often been held either as the exception to the rule or have not been labeled as Fantasy at all. Further, the lack of Fantasy in the curricula of colleges across the country has become so egregious as to ignore modern literary giants such as George R.R. Martin who competes e... ...ery dissimilarities than any other story could because of its similarities. Lewis said, â€Å"The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity† (On Stories 90). â€Å"By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality; we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves.† Bibliography Lewis, C.S. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1961. Lewis, C.S. On Stories and Other Essays on Literature. Ed. Walter Hooper. New York. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1966. Tolkien, J.R.R. â€Å"On Fairy-Stories.† Tree and Leaf. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965. Tolkien’s label â€Å"fairy-story† can be taken synonymously with fantasy literature.