by realjeffseymour

Literary fantasy may be the hardest of all the fantasy subgenres for me, at any rate, to describe. Stories in this category don't always share setting elements, character archetypes, or plot elements, and one person's idea of what counts as literary can be wildly divergent from another's. The history of the subgenre reaches back to early epics like Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, Beowulf, and The Odyssey, and incorporates plays, early novels, poems, and more between then and now. Chunks of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Thomas Mallory, and Edgar Alan Poe, for instance, all count. So in the spirit of the genre itself (a tendency to start interesting discussions being one of the things that defines literary fantasy), take everything I have to say here as a starting point for discussion. It covers so much, over so broad a period, and means so many different things to so many different people, that nothing I could say here would be completely uncontroversial.

That said, I'll start with something most people should be able to agree on: literary fantasy is fantasy that exists to make you think. These stories explore philosophies, ideologies, and existential questions through the vehicle of fantastical worlds and situations. The best of them entertain while they do it, but that's not their primary goal. Theme isn't just ticking quietly along in the background, it's front and center, in your face on every page, demanding your attention. As long as literary fantasy gets you thinking (even if you disagree with whatever it has to say about the world), then it's succeeded. Octavia Butler's investigations of femininity, masculinity, mortality, family, and colonialism in Wild Seed. Ursula K. Leguin's subtle undoing of expectations about who can be heroes and wizards in A Wizard of Earthsea. The character-driven short stories of Charles De Lint, Roger Zelazny, and many others, which take situations common in fantasy and show how they change if you layer realistic psychology over them, inviting you to ponder what it is you really love about fantasy, and why, and what that says about you. If you want a free glimpse at the cutting edge of the genre, you can check out the websites of modern magazines like Clarkesworld and Lightspeed as well.

The themes explored in literary fantasy cover just about everything under the sun, but there are a few common ones. The most common is for a story to be about fantasy itself, and its meaning in the broader world. Literary fantasy tends to be the most self-aware of all the forms of fantasy, sometimes to the point of being incomprehensible if you haven't read the other texts the author had in mind when writing it. These are stories that know what they are, and that exist in conscious conversation with others like them. They are often reactions to prevailing norms in the genre, when an author wants to stand up and say, "Hey, wait a second! Let's stop and think about the roles we give women in fantastical quests, or why we're always writing about restoring monarchies. Is it a problem that we're so focused on heroes changing the world through the intervention of gods and magical artifacts? What gives a god-blessed hero the right to impose their ideas on everyone else? What if they're working for the wrong god? What if the people they rescue were happy before they showed up and tore the firmament asunder to right an ancient wrong?" or whatever else has gotten under their skin as they read. They're stories that take the point of view of the orc, the Southron, the Dark Wizard, the wicked witch, the evil queen. The best of them provide answers to those questions that shape new norms, which the next generation of authors then responds to, and so on and so on. Other common themes are explorations of big questions: what makes a good life, what makes people happy or unhappy, what's the proper role of religion or government in a person's life, etc.

Setting-wise, literary fantasy can take place anywhere. It can be contemporary, urban, historical, steampunk, epic, secondary world, far-future, or anything you can imagine. In fact, melding other subgenres is common in literary fantasy. Neil Gaiman's American Gods, for instance, blends elements of urban fantasy, mythological fantasy, quest fantasy, absurdist fantasy, and humorous fantasy, all while exploring what happens to the gods of our fantastical narratives when we're done with them on the one hand, and the tapestry of life in the rarely-written-about-in-fantasy middle of the United States of America on the other.

In terms of character, literary fantasy can focus on anyone, in any way and for any reason, but extremely detailed, deep, realistic psychological characterization is most common here. Characters in much of literary fantasy behave more like real people than they do in, say, the stylized or idealized worlds of many high and epic fantasy stories, or in myths and allegories. Literary fantasy that uses this characterization relies upon the author displaying a deep understanding of what really motivates people, then deploying that understanding in relation to the problems of a fantastical world. Narratives exploring the motivations of gods (The Gospel of Loki, Joanne M. Harris), or the impact of gaining superhuman magical powers on a person's view of the self and society (Watchmen, Alan Moore), for instance, tend to crop up frequently.

Beyond that, literary fantasy tends to be beautifully written, or at least intentionally ugly. Most literary fantasy writers slave over each and every word in their stories. You may read a 150,000-word novel without a description repeated, a single cliche uttered, one unnecessary adverb, or one questionable use of a semicolon. Each author working in the genre develops their own voice and style. Some are terse. Some are flowery. Most fall in between. But they tend to care deeply about language as well as about story, and to show that in their work.

I don't always want to write, or read, literary fantasy. It can be exhausting to create, and fans of the genre are so contentious that you'll never please everyone. Your stories may, in fact, never be recognized as literary at all, and that can sting just as deeply as you might expect. But I find myself coming back to the genre over and over again, perhaps because it feels like an endless, swirling argument over what matters most in fantasy and in life, and those are subjects I have deep, strong feelings about and want to weigh in on. It feels good to participate in a tradition that reaches back beyond the beginning of history. It feels good to stretch myself as a writer. And it feels good when, as one Wattpad reviewer said of one of my early novels, I write something "steaky." I have always loved fantasy that makes me think, and I will always come back to writing it because of that.

Example of Literary Fantasy on Wattpad:
Three Dances by realjeffseymour

Synopsis:

A boy runs into the supernatural on his way to ask a girl to dance. A young woman wakes up hung over in a goddess's bed. A mountain climber falls into a crevasse and hears the story of a glacier's life. An Internet marketer finds a speechless, naked woman on his balcony, covered in feathers. And a young couple discovers that life off the road can sometimes be even harder than life on it.

In his short story collection Three Dances, Jeff Seymour explores gender, sexuality, youth, and oddness in the midst of beauty. Fans of magical realism and intricate, poetic prose will find plenty to delight in as he wedges his words into the cracks in the sublime, pries them open, and shares the things that fall out.

Excerpt:

In the real world, people don't just drop out of the heavens and onto your deck.

It therefore took me a minute to figure out what the feather-covered bundle on my balcony was.

The sky was just getting light enough to really see by when I found her. I had a small corner apartment back then, on the third story of a brick building above a pretty, quiet street. The place had wood floors, a kitchen with fully functioning appliances, and lots of windows. Even on rainy days, it felt bright and sunny.

The apartment also had a little balcony that was too small to put a table or a grill on, but just the right size for smoking a cigarette in the rain. Not knowing quite what to do with it, I had set an Adirondack chair out there. Sometimes, I'd sit on it and read.

Anyway, when I woke up one September morning, there was what looked like a big pile of tawny feathers on my balcony. It was a blustery enough day that my apartment creaked when the wind blew, and the hall outside filled with an eerie hooting whenever someone opened the door downstairs. The feathers blew off of the top of their pile in fits and starts. A few seemed to be stuck to the sliding glass door that led onto the balcony.

As I stood in my living room, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and fumbling for the thermostat, the pile shifted, and I realized that underneath it was a young woman curled up in the fetal position, entirely naked. More of the feathers blew away, and by the time they were all gone, she had become fairly clear.

She was pretty, and smooth-skinned. Brown hair the color of an old, unpainted telephone pole protruded from her scalp in long, treelike tufts. She looked like she was asleep.

Not sure what else to do, I retrieved a blanket from my bedroom and slid the balcony door open.

"Excuse me—miss?" I took the liberty of draping the blanket over her. I wasn't sure how she'd managed to climb naked up to a third-story balcony and fall asleep, but I was fairly certain that if I was a young woman who had done such a thing, I wouldn't want to wake up with a man I'd never met looking at my body.

She didn't stir. My hand came into contact with her shoulder. Her skin felt as cold as the concrete it lay upon.

She opened her eyes.

I loved those eyes.

They were the biggest I had ever seen on a person—round and wide and innocent and dark, with golden irises. When I woke her, they filled with fear.

"It's okay," I said, or something very much like it. "I'm not going to hurt you. I don't know how you got up here, but you're welcome to come inside. I can get you some clothes and something warm to drink, and we can try to figure out what happened."

She looked at me like I was speaking Greek, so I tried my best broken Spanish.

"Ah, estes ok. Yo no te hiero. Yo quiero te ayudar."

She just blinked at me.

"Francais? Deutsch? Italiano?"

Nothing.

So I bent down, slow and gentle as I could, and took her hand. Her fingers were frigid and stiff.

"Come in and warm up," I said.

I gestured into the living room, and she leaned on my arm and rose to her feet. The blanket hung from her shoulders like a child's forgotten cape.

She walked strangely, wobbly-legged, like the baby Wildebeest you sometimes see on TV—the ones that have to be able to run three minutes or so after birth or they get left behind by the herd.

I helped her to the little table I kept to eat on and sat her down.

"I'm going to put some hot water on and find you some clothes. Just try to relax, okay?"

She was shaking. I couldn't tell if it was from the cold or from something else. The thought that she might be a drug addict occurred to me, but she didn't have the look. Her skin was as fresh as clean linen, not sagging and pale. Her hair was combed and soft, her nails clean and short. And there wasn't a needle mark on her.

When I returned from the bedroom, carrying a pair of pajama pants and an oversized sweatshirt, she was naked again. Right in the view of all my big picture windows.

"Jesus," I breathed.

She was running her hands over her body, looking at every part of it, standing up and sitting down and touching herself, counting her fingers and her toes. When she turned to face the street, I chucked the clothes on the table and ran for the blinds.

"Listen, miss, you can't just—"

But when I looked back at her, she was staring at me with those eyes, and I couldn't finish the sentence.

"Okay," I said. I dropped into a chair across from her. "Okay, you can. Go ahead. Do...whatever. Jesus."

More resources:

Marlon James – Our Myths, Our Selves | Tolkien Lecture 2019

https://youtu.be/jV2bysurBds

Women Writing the Fantastic | BIFF 2019

https://youtu.be/3A9CeXalRyc

Gregory B. Sadler – Philosophy, Fantasy, and Science Fiction

https://youtu.be/EV6OVOFk-vE