History of Fantasy Scholarship

Very good blog post, by Benjamin J. Robertson, on the history of fantasy scholarship. He's also noted elsewhere on his blog how badly the fantasy genre needs theorizing, so I think I'm turning into a major fan.

Basically, fantasy criticism has focused on four topics:
  1. the literary history of fantasy, its antecedents in folklore, fairy tales, epics, the romance, the pastoral, etc.;
  2. the question of the impossible
  3. the distinctions and relationships between fantasy and the fantastic
  4. the rhetorical strategies through which fantasy achieves its ends.
This list is basically a variation of the more Tolkien-focused list of topics that I'll be presenting at Leeds IMC in a month. In addition, fantasy criticism's excessive concern with definition has also been a major hurdle. 
And I'm pleased to note that I've read all the books Robertson discusses -- including recent ones by Farah Mendlesohn, Michael T. Saler, Stefan Ekman, Brian Attebery, and Helen Young. Good stuff.

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