The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

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The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is an English-language dictionary published by John Clute and John Grant on the authors, works and topics of fantasy . In addition to the two editors, who wrote around half of the articles, the co-editors Mike Ashley , Roz Kaveney , David Langford and Ron Tiner as well as Brian Stableford were significantly involved with about a third of the articles . Other collaborators were David G. Hartwell and Gary Westfahl . Since 2012, the second edition has been available online in a largely unchanged version. The online version contains 4,133 entries (2,844 articles and 1,289 references) with around 1.2 million words of text. The basis of the digital version was a CD-ROM edition planned by David Langford for 1999 , but this did not materialize.

Content and terminology

In terms of content, the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (EoF) is not limited to articles on authors and individual works, rather articles on topics and terms play a central role. The corresponding terms were then used in other articles and cross- referenced, providing a consistent terminological framework, a technique similar to that used in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls , the second edition of which was the Encyclopedia of Fantasy was designed as a supplement. Some of these terms were common, and some were used by individual specialist authors in the critical literature. In the themed articles, these terms have now been made more precise, and sometimes new terms have been created, which have now also found their way into the terminology of fantasy criticism.

The transition between the “real” world and the other world, the world of fairies and magic, can serve as an example for such conceptualizations. If a defined border - and accordingly a border crossing clearly marked in the narrative - exists, the Otherworld is a "polder" in EoF terminology, i.e. an area within a guarded or protected border, similar to the polder enclosed by dykes . The clearly pronounced, point-like transition is a "portal" in the EoF, if it is less focused on one point and forms a border area, EoF speaks of "threshold". However, there is no clear transition and the real and the magical world merge imperceptibly, penetrate and entangle each other, according to the EoF there is a case of “crosshatch” (literally “ cross hatching ”). In this way, the EoF provides a conceptual apparatus through which the content of fantasy works can be characterized briefly and precisely.

Examples are given for the terms or the corresponding motifs , for example for "Answered Prayer", the motif of the "answered prayer", as the classic example the story Die Affenpfote or the novel Friedhof der Kuscheltiere by Stephen King .

Like the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction , the EoF rarely contains biographical information about the authors, and if so, only in the most concise form. A supplementary work in this regard is the roughly simultaneous St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers by David Pringle , which - as the title suggests - contains only author's articles, each with short biographies of the authors.

As an underlying rough definition of what fantasy is is given in the introduction

"[...] a self-coherent narrative which, when set in our reality, tells a story which is impossible in the world as we perceive it; when set in an Otherworld or Secondary World […] stories set there will be possible in the otherworld's terms. "

"[...] a coherent narrative whose story is not possible in the world as we know it, but which would be possible in an other world or an alternative world [in the sense of JRR Tolkien ] according to the laws of this world."

called. In terms of time, the authors and works treated are drawn at the end of the 18th century. Older things - in the EoF as "Taproot Texts" - such as Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream - are dealt with in some detail, back to the Bible and the Gilgamesh epic , but not as part of the essentially modern genre of fantasy seen. Horror literature as part of fantasy is treated, but rather marginally.

Awards

expenditure

The first edition was bound, the second edition appeared as a paperback.

literature

  • Neal Baker: Review: Into the Woods of Nonspecificity. In: Science Fiction Studies Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 1998), pp. 128-130.
  • David Langford : Encyclopedia of Fantasy, The. In: John Clute , Peter Nicholls : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . 3rd edition (online edition), version dated September 11, 2018.
  • Wayne G. Hammond: Book Review: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, . In: Mythprint Vol. 37, No. 10 (October 1997).
  • Rob Latham: Review: “The Encyclopedia of Fantasy” as a “critical tour de force”. In: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Vol. 9, No. 1 (1998), pp. 69-76.
  • John Maxymuk: Review: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. In: Reference & User Services Quarterly Vol. 37, No. 2 (Winter 1997), pp. 218, 220.
  • David Seed: Review: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. In: The Modern Language Review Vol. 94, No. 3 (July 1999), pp. 806 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annalee Newitz : At last the Encyclopedia of Fantasy is free and searchable online! in the science fiction blog io9 on November 26, 2012, accessed on December 4, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Encyclopedia of Fantasy - Introduction to the Online Text , accessed December 4, 2018.
  3. ^ John Clute: Polder . In: EoF-Online.
  4. ^ John Clute: Portals . In: EoF-Online.
  5. ^ John Clute: Thresholds . In: EoF-Online.
  6. ↑ John Clute: Crosshatch . In: EoF-Online.
  7. ↑ John Clute: Answered Prayers . In: EoF-Online.
  8. ↑ David Pringle: St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers. St. James Press, New York 1996, ISBN 1-55862-205-5 .