Folklore and Fantastic Literature

Author(s): C. W. Sullivan, III

Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 279-296
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1500409
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Folklore and Fantastic Literature
C. W. SULLIVANIII

I
At first blush, joining a term like "folklore,"which has its roots deep in
traditions traceable back through generations, with terms like "fantasy"
and "science fiction," which seem to have less to do with the past than
with alternate realities or projected futures, may seem like ajuxtaposition
of dubious value. Folk materials, it seems, are something we recognize
quickly in nineteenth-century writers like Cooper, Melville, or
Hawthorne, or something we use to decode writers from longer ago and
farther away-Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Gawain poet, for example.
But this latter use of folklore, to help decode literatures of the remote
past and therefore substantiallyremoved from the world in which we now
live, is a key to that juxtaposition: the writer of fantastic literature, the
creator of impossible worlds, has need of and uses folklore to make those
imagined words accessible to the reader in much the same way,if obverse,
as the modern critic might use a knowledge of folk materials to gain
access to the meaning(s) behind Shakespeare's depictions of "heroic
deaths" in Macbeth,Chaucer's use of the color red in reference to the
Wife of Bath's stockings, or the Gawain poet's attention to hunting lore.
In short, fantasy and science fiction authors use traditional materials,
from individual motifs to entire folk narratives, to allow their readers to
recognize, in elemental and perhaps subconscious ways, the reality and
cultural depth of the impossible worlds these authors have created.
The word "impossible" appears in many of the leading critical defini-
tions of fantastic literature. C.S. Lewis, in Experimentin Criticism(1965),
defines fantasy as "any narrative that deals with impossibles or preter-
naturals" (50). In Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (1975), Colin Manlove
argues that a "substantial and irreducible element of supernatural or
impossible worlds, beings, or objects" is essential to fantastic literature;
and he defines "supernatural or impossible" as "of another order of real-
ity from that in which we exist and form our notions of possibility" (3).
In TheFantastic in Literature(1976), Eric Rabkin argues that the "polar
opposite" of reality is fantasy (15). And in "Problems of Fantasy" (1978),

WesternFolklore60:4 (Fall 2001):279-296. Copyright ? 2002, California Folklore Society

280 C. W. SULLIVANIII

S.C. Fredericks calls fantasy "the literature of the impossible" (37).

These critical exercises, which took place in the 1960s and 1970s, as fan-
tastic literature was experiencing an enormous increase in popularity,
led Gary Wolfe, in 'The Encounter with Fantasy" (1982), to assert that
the "criterion of the impossible . . . may be the first principle generally
agreed upon for the study of fantasy" (1-2).
Although the foregoing definitions have appeared to set fantastic lit-
erature in opposition to realistic literature, critic Kathryn Hume sug-
gests that we should see the real and the impossible as separate ends of
a continuum that includes all fiction. She argues that
literature is the product of two impulses. These are mimesis,felt as the
desire to imitate, to describe events, people, and objects with such
verisimilitude that others can share your experience; and fantasy, the
desire to change givens and alter reality-out of boredom, play, vision,
longing for something lacking, or need for metaphoric images that will
bypassthe audience's verbal defenses (20).
And fantasy, Hume continues, "is any departurefromconsensusreality"(21,
italics in the original). All literature is, then, part mimetic and part fan-
tastic, with realistic fiction toward one end of the spectrum and fantas-
tic fiction toward the other.
The creation of a fantastic world is not just a matter of introducing
impossible people or things into an otherwise realistic world, blending
the mimetic and the fantastic-although that is basically the strategy of
much horror fiction. Science fiction and fantasy require the author to
create a world that makes sense in and of itself. J.R.R. Tolkien may have
been the first to articulate the principle of the Secondary World.
What really happens is that the story-makerproves a successful "sub-cre-
ator."He makes a Secondary Worldwhich your mind can enter. Inside it,
what he relates is "true":it accords with the laws of that world. You there-
fore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief
arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed (37).
Numerous critics since have echoed Tolkien's argument. Jane Yolen, in
TouchMagic, says that the "amazing thing about fantasy is its absolute
consistency" (77); in "Flat-Heeled Muse" (1965), Lloyd Alexander
remarks that a fantasy writer's muse asks bothersome questions about
consistency (141-146); in The Greenand Burning Tree (1962), Eleanor
Cameron argues that the author must "create an inner logic for his story
and ... draw boundary lines outside of which his fantasy may not wan-
der" (17); and in TheFantasy Traditionin Americafrom Irving to LeGuin
 andFantasticLiterature
Folklore 281

(1980), Brian Attebery asserts that fantasy "needs consistency" (2). In

light of these remarks, it might be argued, as I have in "Fantasy"
(Sullivan 1992:99) and Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy (Sullivan
1989:94-96), that the criterion of the logically-created or cohesive
Secondary World is, to follow Gary Wolfe's phraseology, the second prin-
ciple agreed upon for the study of fantasy.
Some part of the creative process through which the mimetic and the
fantastic elements are combined-or reconciled-into a logically-cohe-
sive Secondary World must also include a strategy or strategies by which
the reader will be able to connect with, be able to understand, and be
able to decode any meaning inherent in the story set in that Secondary
World and also decode that Secondary World itself. There must be
enough of the familiar, the mimetic, within the story so that the reader
can understand the nature of the unfamiliar, the fantastic. Some of the
familiar elements may be a part or parts of the kind of story being told.
Arthurian fantasy and High Fantasy in general will take place in a famil-
iar western European, medieval landscape and will be acted out by peo-
ple in familiar roles: knights, ladies, villains, wizards, elves, dragons,
trolls, and the like. Stories of space exploration and warfare will have
their own stock interplanetary journeys and settings and will be acted
out by characters in familiar roles: the ship's captain, the friendly alien,
the unfriendly alien, and the like.1
A more complex strategy by which the author of fantastic literature
can connect the reader with the Secondary World and its characters is
through folklore. As is obvious from the preceding paragraph, an
author of fantasy, and sometimes science fiction as well, can take whole
tales from the general store of legendry, and not only western European
legendry, and retell those stories making them more fantastic in the
process, as Marion Zimmer Bradley does with the Arthurian materials in
The Mists of Avalon. But Bradley and the other Arthurians are obvious
examples, and will be dealt with in their turn. There are also less obvi-
ous uses of folklore that connect the reader with the text-both more
complex uses, which operate on the level of cultural worldview, and sim-
pler uses, which employ specific motifs and other individual elements of
folklore to make the Secondary World a more homey place for the
reader. This Secondary World, whether set in an imagined future or re-
imagined past, needs to have within it materials such that the world
"makes sense" to the reader; in this regard, recognizable folklore (and
materials modeled on that folklore) are central to the creation of that
world. It is to these uses of folklore that I wish to turn now.
282 C. W.SULLIVAN
III

II
In "Real-izing the Unreal: Folklore in Young Adult Science Fiction
and Fantasy" (Sullivan 1992:141-155), I examined J.R.R. Tolkien's fan-
tasy novel, TheHobbit,and Robert A. Heinlein's twelve 'juvenile" science
fiction novels in terms of each author's use of folk materials. Both
Tolkien and Heinlein, for example, co-opt traditional proverbs, using
the familiar sayings in fantastic situations. "Out of the frying pan and
into the fire," 'Third time pays for all," and "Where there's life there's
hope" appear in The Hobbit;and various proverbs, proverbial compar-
isons and traditional metaphors such as "Don't let him pull your leg," "I
can straighten out and fly right," "Pretty as a picture," "Deader than a
doornail," "I'll fix his clock," "Fishor cut bait," and "Half a loaf is better
than none" appear in Heinlein's works. These are all traditional sayings
that even young adult readers would recognize and that would make the
characters saying them more familiar to those readers.2
But Tolkien and Heinlein use these traditional expressions for
another purpose as well. Both create "new"sayings, that is, sayings which
are a part of the invented world but not a part of the reader's world.
Tolkien's Bilbo remembers a saying of his father's, "Everyworm has his
weak spot," and coins one himself, "Never laugh at a live dragon."
Various Heinlein characters remark, "Don't burn out your jets before
you take off" and "Don't blow your tubes," obviously variations on the
same formula. Heinlein has an acquatic Venerian creature say, 'Tell thy
impatient daughter to chase her fish and I will chase mine," which the
reader should recognize as a traditional way of saying "mind your own
business"-on Venus. Both authors have used traditional, recognizable
sayings with which the reader would be familiar to set up for later say-
ings indigenous to the Secondary World on which they are heard. As
Neil Grobman suggests in "A Schema for the Study of the Sources and
Literary Simulations of Folkloric Phenomena" (1979), these are two of
the main functions of folklore in literature: (1) "to give verisimilitude
and local color," and (2) to serve as "models for production of folklore-
like materials" (28-30).3
In addition to traditional materials they might well have grown up
with, both authors drew on their educations for materials from mythol-
ogy, legend, and history to give their novels a "familiar"feel. In addition
to following the general structure of the Marchen, TheHobbit,as I have
argued elsewhere, may also be patterned after the Icelandic family sagas
that Tolkien knew well; moreover, the three-leveled world of the saga-
mythic, heroic, and familiar-is very much the world of The Hobbitand
 Folklore
andFantasticLiterature 283

even more so the world of TheLordof theRings (see Sullivan, 'Tolkien the
Bard," 2000).4 In addition, much of the paraphernalia of TheHobbitcan
be traced to Tolkien's study of Scandinavian myths, legends, family
sagas, and folklore in general: the names of the dwarves come from The
ProseEdda, the dragon, Smaug, is directly descended from the dragon in
Beowulf, and the magic arrow, ancestral swords, wizards, elves, trolls,
giants, shape-changers, and others come from the more general store-
house of western European lore. Even Tolkien's opening of the story
proper, "One morning long ago in the quiet of the world," (3) is but a
slightly-changed variant of "Once upon a time."
As Tolkien looked to the Scandinavian materials, Heinlein looked to
American folklore and history. The title of Heinlein's Farmerin the Sky
(1975), which described the settlement and terraforming of one of
Jupiter's moons, is certainly meant to remind the reader of the tradi-
tional play rhyme, 'The Farmer in the Dell," and one chapter of that
book is entitled 'Johnny Appleseed." For Heinlein, the exploration of
space in the juvenile series was much like the settlement of the American
west. In Tunnel in the Sky (1955), the men who lead settlers to new plan-
ets look like Buffalo Bill; in SpaceCadet(1948), one of the characters is
constantly recounting the exploits of his "Uncle Bodie," a character who
could have stepped right out of a traditional tall-tale; and in RocketShip
Galileo(1947), the mother of one of the young main characters defends
his wish to go into space on a riskyventure by comparing it to that of the
boy's own great-great-grandfather,who crossed the plains in a covered
wagon at age nineteen with his seventeen-year-old bride, much against
the wishes of either family. The traditional and historical references
Tolkien and Heinlein make would not all be lost on their readers and
would give those readers another mode within which to apprehend those
novels; for example, even though the new wagon trains in Tunnel in the
Sky(1955) are going from this world to another through a time and space
"gate," Heinlein's description of them evokes the nineteenth-century
American migration west and helps the reader understand that, technol-
ogy aside for the moment, this activity is one in which humans have par-
ticipated-and may well continue to participate-for millennia.5
The reliance of fantastic literature on the elements of folktale and leg-
end is also easily verified by quick look at the MotifIndexfor items which
are common to both traditional tales and fantastic literature. Under
Animals, for example, dragons have their own number: B11. Under that
heading are included "transformed princess as dragon" (Bl1.1.3.0.1),
"many-headed dragon" (B11.2.3), and various sub-divisions according to
284 C. W.SULLIVAN
III

the actual number of heads, "fire-breathingdragon" (B11.2.11), "dragon

guards treasure" (Bl 1.6.2), and "fightwith dragon," the largest single cat-
egory (B1.11). Surprisingly, there are very few entries for unicorns.
Under Magic Weapons are, among others, "magic sword" (D1081),
"knife" (D1083), "spear" (D1084), "sling" (D1087), "bow" (D1091),
"arrow," [the largest single category] (D1092), "club" (D1094),
"firearms" (D1096), with various subdivisions, "bullet" (D1096.3), and
"armor" (D1101). And under Unpromising Hero are included "orphan
hero" (L 11.4), "swineherd as hero" (L 13.1.1), and "stable-boyas hero"
(L 13.1.2). This is only a minuscule sampling of the motifs that are com-
mon to both fantastic literature and traditional stories. These motifs-
along with such things as proverbs and other sayings, riddles, rhymes,
and the like-become the initial building blocks upon which the reality
of the Secondary World is constructed and through which the reader is
connected to that Secondary World.

III

Science fiction and fantasy authors depend on more than just motifs
and other individual elements from tradition to create a cohesive
Secondary World and connect the reader to it; they also may depend on
such larger constructs as entire stories to structure their works of fan-
tastic fiction. In some cases, the myths, legends, folktales, or ballads
themselves are sufficiently fantastic that nothing needs be added and a
retelling, usually expanded, is the result. In other cases, the traditional
tale provides something like the skeletal structure of the plot, and the
author fleshes that structure out to present a theme that may or may not
have been implicit in the original. At the farthest remove are authors
like Tolkien who use the basic Marchen structure but invent their own
characters and events within that structure. Obviously, the writers of fan-
tasy are more likely to use entire traditional tales than are science fiction
writers, but even the latter group will build a futuristic and technologi-
cal tale on a traditional foundation-as George Lucas has done with at
least the first film of the Star Warssaga.6
Much fantastic fiction follows the familiar Marchen structure out-
lined by Linda Degh (1972), among many others from Vladimir Propp
to Albert Lord, in which the ordinary and often orphaned main charac-
ter is pulled from his mundane world into an adventure which takes him
through the "magic forest" (in science fiction, of course, the magic for-
est is outer space) with staunch companions to defeat a great evil and
from which he returns older, wiser, and often wealthier and well wed
 Folklore
andFantasticLiterature 285

(Degh 63). But the structure itself is only the beginning; science fiction
and fantasy writers use that structure for a rhetorical purpose. As Roger
Abrahams comments in "Folklore and Literature as Performance"
(1972), "The idea that lies behind performance is a remarkably simple
one: to set up rhythms and expectancies which will permit-indeed,
insist upon-a synchronized audience reaction" (78). Fantasy or science
fiction readers, having been exposed to these structures or patterns
from their childhood readings and even Disney movies, will, consciously
or unconsciously, respond to the familiar pattern in a predictable way-
Abrahams's "synchronized audience reaction"-when they find it in fan-
tastic literature.
The most popular traditional quarry for modern fantasy writers has
been the one containing the Arthurian materials. Although T. H. White
was not the first, his rendering of the Arthurian materials in The Once
and Future King (1939) did much to shape the twentieth-century sub-
genre of Arthurian fantasy as a whole. White, like Tennyson before him,
looked to Malory as his source but then adapted the material to his own
vision, and where Tennyson made Camelot a distinctly Victorian place,
White used it as a platform from which to present his anti-war ideas.
More important, however, was the humor with which he invested the sto-
ries, a humor which changed Arthur and his court from idealized and
remote beings to recognizable and sympathetic humans, and White
added these more mundane elements without sacrificing the greater
dimensions of the story which have been there since before even
Malory. The authors who have followed White, from Lerner and Lowe,
in their highly sentimental Camelot(1960) to Rosemary Sutcliff, in her
historical Swordat Sunset (1963) have, like White, given us human char-
acters caught up in great events.
At a significant remove from the Arthurians are the fantasy authors
who use traditional British ballads to structure their novels. Ellen
Kushner's ThomastheRhymer(1990) retells the story found in Child #37,
and Pamela Dean's TamLin (1991) and Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and
Hemlock(1985) retell Child #39. But they do more than retell. Kushner
andJones include materials from other Child ballads in their works, and
Dean andJones set their works in the twentieth century. Kushner's story
is told from four different perspectives, but essentially she chooses to
focus on Thomas's return from Elfland and his struggle to use the power
given him. Dean and Jones bring most of the fairy characters from the
past to the present because time passes very differently for the fairy folk
than for mortals; however, the female characters taking the 'Janet" role
286 C. W.SULLIVAN
III

are from the twentieth century and appear to be normal, mortal women
of sufficient strength to rescue the men they love from the clutches of
the fairy queen.
Yet other authors have drawn on ancient myth for the patterns of
their stories. Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1967) and Evangeline
Walton's Mabinogi tetralogy, for example, have drawn on the medieval
Welsh prose pieces known as the Four Branches of the Mabinogifor the
plots and characters in their books. In both cases, the authors take a 20-
page original and expand it into a several hundred page novel. Walton
sets her novels in a mythical past, but Garner's is contemporary and
takes place in a remote valley near Aberystwyth where the same pattern
of events has been cycling down through the generations and the cen-
turies.7 Some authors-most notably Kenneth Morris, in TheFates of the
Princes of Dyfed (1914) and Book of the ThreeDragons (1930), Lloyd
Alexander, in the five-book series, the Chronicles of Prydain, and Nancy
Bond, in A String in the Harp (1997)-have also used materials from
Welsh myth and folklore in their novels; and Louise Lawrence's Earth
Witch(1981) depicts an ancient fertility ritual involving human sacrifice
taking place in contemporary Wales. Other authors have drawn on
other mythologies: Roger Zelazny based his Lord of Light (1967) and
Creaturesof Light and Darkness(1969) on Indian mythology and Egyptian
mythology, respectively; Stephan Grundy's Rhinegold(1994) and Diana
Paxson's Nibelungenlied trilogy (1993, 1995, 1996) are based on
Scandinavian/Teutonic mythology, and so on.8
Following the lead of the authors who looked to ancient pre-Christian
traditions, some authors have drawn on Christian materials, recorded in
the New Testament as well as in the more likely Old Testament, as a
source for fantasy literature. Not surprisingly, many of those stories have
focused on either the story of Adam and Eve or the story of Christ. To
some extent, C.S. Lewis's Narnia series and Space trilogy, Madeleine
L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, and George MacDonald's Phantastes
(1858) and Lillith (1895) retell Old or New Testament stories or present
basic Old Testament conflicts. Many of the Adam and Eve stories, like
Charles Harness's '"TheNew Reality" (1950), pose a more scientific ori-
gin for the first couple than the one provided in Genesis while still fol-
lowing the Genesis plot outline. Harlan Ellison's "The Deathbird"
(1975) offers an insane Jehovah and a sane Lucifer, reversing the roles
found in Genesis. The story is dedicated to Mark Twain. Michael
Moorcock's BeholdtheMan (1966) tells of a time traveler who goes back
to see the real Christ, finds a congenital idiot namedJesus, and takes his
 Folkloreand FantasticLiterature 287

place-doing the miracles and dying on the cross. In James Morrow's

recent TowingJehovah(1994), a discredited ship's captain is offered the
job of towing the enormous corpse of Jehovah from where it has fallen
into the south Atlantic to the Arctic, where it can be preserved. Ellison,
Moorcock, and Morrow are using the Christian materials for satiric pur-
poses, and the satire is as often sociological as religious.
The best fantasy authors who do not draw on a specific body of lore-
such as the Arthurian corpus, on a particular ballad or set of ballads, on
certain pre-Christian myths, or on the Christian stories themselves-may
synthesize all of those sources and weave a masterpiece of fantasy as did
J.R.R. Tolkien in TheHobbitand TheLord of the Rings. Tolkien structures
both works like folktales and then overlaysand fleshes them out with char-
acters, scenes, and other items borrowed from or modeled after the tra-
ditional materials he had studied all his life, western European prose and
poetry composed in the middle ages or earlier. Tolkien's creation is virtu-
ally seamless (although T. A. Shippey's The Road to MiddleEarth (1983)
provides an excellent account of the sources on which Tolkien drew). It is
because of both the traditional materials and his synthesis of them that
Tolkien's novels are the standard by which all of the others are judged.
These and other fantasy authors do not draw on traditional folk mate-
rials out of a lack of imagination or creativity.The fantasy author, in many
ways, works like a traditional tale teller; his or her transmission medium,
however, is the printed page and not the oral recitation, and so the tra-
ditional narrative nature of the fantasy story may be overlooked, as I have
recently argued ('J. R. R. Tolkien and the Telling of a Traditional
Narrative" 1996). The fantasy author, whether using the general sense of
the traditional tale, as Tolkien does, or patterning a novel after the plot
of a specific ballad, as Kushner does, wants above all to tell a good story,
or more specifically in some cases, tell a good 'Tam Lin" or 'Thomas the
Rhymer" or Arthurian story. The reader's understanding of story, and
especially traditional story, allows him or her access to this new telling,
access that might not be available with the elite or mainstream novel
(Sullivan, "Learning the Structure of Traditional Narrative" 1992).

IV
The most complex level on which fantastic literature operates and
depends upon traditional materials for that operation is the level of cul-
tural worldview. Generally, fantasy and science fiction have supported
western cultural values and worldview. Fantasy has upheld general
notions of good and evil and, again drawing on traditional tales, has
288 C. W. SULLIVANIII

shown the good being rewarded and the evil punished. Science fiction,
while not always so clear about good and evil as it is constructed by
Western culture, has generally supported the western attitudes toward
industrialization, capitalism, and expansion. Writers of science fiction's
1940s and 1950s "Golden Age," men (generally) such as Robert A.
Heinlein, believed in the direction inherent in western progress since
the Industrial Revolution and were able to portray people building bet-
ter machines (including those that would take them to the stars), having
a better life (both healthier and materially richer), and spreading that
worldview to the other planets (no matter what stood in the way). The
Star Trektelevision series, in all of its incarnations and spin-offs, is based
on the rightness and inevitability ofjust those three premises. While this
vision has dominated, it has not been uniform; and there have been an
increasing number of voices in the field asking the readers to examine
their cultural values.
Literary critic Kathryn Hume's concept of "consensus reality" (above,
page 1) is very similar to a folklorist's or anthropologist's concept of cul-
tural worldview. In his definition of cultural worldview, Barre Toelken
argues that "objective reality ... actually varies widely according to the
viewer's means of perceiving it" (225). Worldview, then, is a product of
cultural consensus. In asking the reader to examine his or her cultural
values, the writer of fantastic literature is, again using folk narrative, as
Abrahams suggests, "to set up rhythms and expectancies which will per-
mit... a synchronized audience reaction" (78). But this time, instead of
confirming the traditional values inherent, if not explicit, in the folk nar-
rative, the author is using those traditional materials in ways that may
actually force the reader to re-examine those values; the author may, in
fact, "setup rhythms and expectancies" that will result in "asynchronized
audience reaction" opposite to the reaction to a traditional narrative.
One fantasy work which stands out in this regard is Marion Zimmer
Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982), an account of Arthur's story told
from the points of view of the women in the story-Igraine, Morgause,
Gwenhwyfar, and Morgaine. But changing the point of view does more
than merely shift the focus from the battlefield to the domestic events,
it highlights the two-fold change that Bradley sees happening in
Arthur's Britain. The first change involves the transition from the Old
Beliefs (Celtic, Druidic) to Christian, with Arthur sworn to uphold faery
and Gwenhwyfar championing St. Patrick. The second transition, and
an integral part of the first, is the change from a matrilineal (and per-
haps matriarchal) culture to a patrilineal and patriarchal culture.
 Folklore
andFantasticLiterature 289

Morgause and Morgaine challenge and oppose both changes through-

out the novel and force the reader to look at beliefs he or she has taken
for granted, and perhaps never examined, in a new light. With the dis-
appearance of Avalon at the end of the book, Bradley suggests, some-
thing important is gone from the world.9
Science fiction, or perhaps better, science fantasy has a history of chal-
lenging and critiquing cultural assumptions. Science fantasy is an odd sub-
genre that has some of the hardware of science fiction but is not as
scrupulous about scientific theory as is true science fiction. Ray
Bradbury's TheMartian Chronicles(1950) opens as a series of stories about
the colonization of Mars,but Bradbury really wants the reader to consider
the Earth culture which is doing the colonizing and consistently forces the
reader to see his or her own culture through the eyes of the Martians.
Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), part of the genesis for the movie
2001: A SpaceOdyssey,portrays the US and USSR space race, and the cul-
tural attitudes behind it, as interfering with the true destiny of the human
race and potentially destructive to the other civilizations in the galaxy;and
Robert Wise's film, TheDay theEarth StoodStill (1951), criticizes the arms-
race worldview without positing any better destiny for Earth's people. All
three of these works-The Martian Chronicles,Childhood's End, and TheDay
the Earth StoodStill-appeared in the early 1950s. Frank Herbert's Dune
and its sequels, which are set in the far future, tell the story of the descen-
dants of the Greek House of Atreus and use the basic structure and ele-
ments of the Romance and Hero Tale to illustrate the negative
consequences for a society, in Herbert's words, "afflictedby a hero" (511).
Even a hard-science science fiction writer can challenge a reader's
notions about culture. Robert A. Heinlein routinely did just that in his
juvenile novels published between 1947 and 1958. Willis, the Martian
"puppy"in RedPlanet (1977), was one of the first "cute"aliens to appear
in science fiction, and Heinlein followed Willis with a whole series of
interesting creatures. In fact, Heinlein depicted the acquatic Venerians of
Space Cadet (1978) as a matrilineal and matriarchal society-certainly a
challenging concept for (mostly male) teenage readers in 1948. Except
for a very few cases, such as the "wormfaces"in Have Space Suit-Will
Travel(1958), the aliens in Heinlein's juveniles are far from the "shoot
first and ask questions later" aliens of much science fiction. In fact the tra-
dition of examining cultural attitudes can be dated back to the original
science fiction writers, Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells, writers who used sci-
ence in their fiction to examine and comment on their own cultures; it is
ironic that popular culture has remembered and continues to return to
290 C. W. SULLIVANIII

Shelley's monster and Wells's Martians much more vividly than to the cul-
tural criticisms which were the main themes in Frankensteinand The War
of the Worlds.
More recently, as the so-called soft sciences of sociology, anthropology,
economics, and the like have made their way into science fiction, there
has been more examination of culture in science fiction. In Stand on
Zanzibar(1968) and several other novels, John Brunner has used science
fiction's basic ability to extrapolate, focused on the socio-ecomonic near
future of Earth instead of the far future of interplanetary exploration,
and tried to show what the world might be like in a few generations if
trends continued as they were when he wrote. Brunner's future is a dis-
mal place of large warfare in small countries, crippling overpopulation,
poisonous pollution, and a generally-decaying quality of life. Ursula K.
LeGuin drew heavily on her background in anthropology for The Left
Hand of Darkness(1969), a novel set on the planet Gethen whose people
are hermaphroditic and can be either male or female during the fertility
period. The reader-counterpart in the novel is a man from Earth who is
there to discuss membership in the Federation with the Gethenians, and
his discomfort among them is a mirror for the reader's; both find much
about the Gethenians that is admirable and much than is unsettling-if
not threatening. Like the other authors mentioned in this regard,
Brunner and LeGuin are asking their readers to consider perhaps
heretofore unexamined cultural attitudes.
Not content with challenging the reader's cultural worldview, Samuel
R. Delany wants readers to examine the basis of reality itself. In The
EinsteinIntersection(1967), Delany offers the possibility that reality is not
what we have been led to believe, and he has a basis in scientific philos-
ophy and theory for offering that possibility. The conflict in Delany's
novel is between the Einsteinian universe, which we have chosen, and
the Godelian universe, which we have chosen to ignore. Einstein's uni-
verse is the rational one, the one that has been in the process of being
officially formulated in western thought since the seventeenth century.
The G6delian universe admits too much irrationality for most people;
Godel, a contemporary of Einstein's, showed that there were elements
in any system that could not be proved using the tools of the system itself
or, in Delany's words, Godel "stuck a pin into the irrational and fixed it
to the wall of the universe so that it held still long enough for people to
know it was there" (121). Within the structure of that conflict, Delany
tells a story that includes Orpheus, Billy the Kid, Christ, Jean Harlow,
and other figures of myth, legend, folktale, and history.
 Folklore
andFantasticLiterature 291

As I have already mentioned, science fiction's roots lie in social criti-

cism, but science fiction's brand of social criticism is more complex than
merely pointing out the damage pollution or littering can do; if that was
all there was to it, it would not be fiction. Science fiction, and occasion-
ally fantasy, challenges and asks the reader to examine the attitudes
behind the behaviors it is criticizing; that is, these authors are not merely
pointing out bad behavior and telling the reader to stop doing that, they
are asking the reader to examine the long-held traditional attitudes or
beliefs which have made that behavior seem, at least at one time, per-
fectly acceptable. Although much science fiction and fantasy represent
dominant western cultural attitudes, there is a large body of writing,
most of it science fiction, which recognizes that those attitudes are only
attitudes and asks the reader to examine their validity and viability.

In "Mythas Structure in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon"(1980), A.

Leslie Harris makes the point that Morrison uses myth not only to pro-
vide the structure of events in the novel, but also to make the concepts
in the novel more comprehensible. Morrison's use of mythology, Harris
contends, makes "contemporary, localized events and characters speak
to those [readers] who cannot share her characters' background and
experiences" (69). In other words, Morrison is employing the universal-
ity of myth to make the readers of one culture understand literary char-
acters and concepts from a culture unfamiliar to them. The inclusion of
traditional materials in novels like Belovedand Song of Solomonadds cul-
tural depth to the story and, in some cases, makes the actions of the
characters more significant, tying them to persistent concerns which
preceding generations of Africans and African-Americans have pre-
served as themes in their sacred and secular narratives.10
The use of traditional Euro-American materials in science fiction and
fantasy, often dismissed as trivial or escape literature, can have the same
effect. Hume suggests (above, page 1) that one of the reasons authors
write fantasy is to "bypassthe audience's verbal defenses." By couching
Christian theology in fantastic novels, authors like C.S. Lewis, Madeleine
L'Engle, and George MacDonald (to name but the most obvious) pro-
duced popular novels which are read first as fantasy novels but can also
be understood as dealing with complex issues of good and evil, sacrifice
and redemption. Less obviously, Tolkien's novels, like the epics and
sagas from which they were drawn, deal with courage, loyalty, honor,
love, loss, and of course good and evil in much the same terms as does
292 C. W.SULLIVAN
III

Beowulf.Even writers of hard science fiction, like Heinlein, deal with

these questions; Heinlein'sjuvenile heroes and heroines are confronted
with ethical questions much more often than they are put to some phys-
ical test, and Heinlein, like Tolkien and the others, ties these ethical tests
to the reader's own time and time before that by his inclusion of and
references to folk materials.
To be sure, the first task of these writers is to "tell a good story," and
much science fiction and fantasy stops there; but the best writers use the
settings provided by science fiction and fantasy to struggle with what may
well be the deepest and most eternal questions of all-what it means to
be human and how to conduct oneself in the world. And they all deal as
cogently with these themes as do the writers of modern, realistic fiction.
Although there is still much work to be done in this area, even in the
mundane field of categorizing and cataloging the traditionalmaterialsto be
readily found in science fiction and fantasy,it should be clear that fantastic
literature depends upon traditional materialsin waysthat perhaps no other
fiction does to provide the reader with access to the text. The problem of
creating a fantastic Secondary World that is at once unreal or impossible
and is also accessible to the reader familiar with only this ordinary world is
a problem solved by compromise. The science fiction or fantasy author
must include enough recognizable material in his or her story so that the
reader can decode the unrecognizable. The inclusion of traditional mate-
rials by these authors or the use of traditional materials to structure whole
stories has proved to be a reliable strategyfor connecting the reader from
the everydayworld with a story set in a fantastic one and for enabling that
reader to decode both the worlds about which they are reading as well as
the significance of that world and the actions which occur there.

East CarolinaUniversity
Greenville,North Carolina

NOTES
1. Unfortunately,these elements have become stereotypicalof science fiction
and fantasyliterature,and all too often, in fact, science fiction and fantasy
are characterizedonly by these stereotypesand by their formulaic struc-
tures.This, of course, is what happens in all branchesof popularfiction as
John Caweltiwas among the first to point out in TheSix-GunMystique: "the
compelling thing about it was ... the vigorousclarityand the dynamicbut
somehowreassuringregularityof the form itself"(2).
 Folkloreand FantasticLiterature 293

2. In "The Identification of Folklore in American Literature" (1957), Richard

Dorson argues that the critic should provide corroborative evidence from
external sources (indexes, collections, and the like) to prove that what
appears in the literary work is, indeed, folklore. In this case, I believe that
the proverbs and other traditional sayings in Tolkien and Heinlein are suf-
ficiently well known to stand on their own.
3. Grobman's "ASchema for the Study of the Sources of Literary Simulations
of Folkloric Phenomena" (1979) was an attempt to synthesize earlier stud-
ies of folklore in literature. The particular functions noted here had previ-
ously been noted by, among others, Richard Dorson, "The Identification of
Folklore in American Literature" (1957), Daniel Hoffman, "Folklore in
Literature: Notes Toward a Theory of Interpretation" (1957), and Alan
Dundes, 'The Study of Folklore in Literature and Culture" (1965), all of
whom argue that the first step was to identify the folklore before attempt-
ing a consideration of how or why that folklore is being used.
4. In "EarlyIcelandic Imaginative Literature" (1989), Hermann Palsson sug-
gests that the "literarycosmos of early Icelandic literature divides into three
primary worlds. First, there is the timeless, hypothetical world of myth,
inhabited by gods and other extramundane beings.... Second, we have the
alien, aristocratic world of heroic legend and romance, a world which is
human though it shares certain obvious features with myth.... Third, there
is the familiar world of experience, mirroring the physical and social reali-
ties cf the author's own environment" (27-28).
5. Heinlein claimed that this kind of science fiction "hasprepared the youth of
our time for the coming of the age of space" (60), and although he does not
acknowledge it as such, a part of the reason that science fiction has been able
to do this is through its use of traditional materials, materials which link-as
does Heinlein's patterning of the exploration of outer space after the settle-
ment of the American continent-the past and present with the future.
6. In the first Star Wars movie released, Luke Skywalkeris working on his aunt
and uncle's farm when two androids literally drop out of the sky and entan-
gle him in an adventure which includes an elderly advisor with mystical
powers, a beautiful princess, several companions with particular abilities,
and an evil adversary appropriately clothed all in black. In spite of the futur-
istic hardware, the story actually takes place in a galaxy "long, long ago and
far, far away"-or, "Once upon a time."
7. Garner's use of Welsh myth in The Owl Service(1967) is particularly inter-
esting. In presenting a mythic pattern that has directly affected the lives of
the people reliving that pattern over the centuries, Garner is commenting
on the power of the past to shape the present and the future and on the
importance of one's knowing his own, or his culture's, mythic background.
These myths, he might say, are not just old stories but active forces which
continue to have an influence.
8. The use of materials from mythology raises some interesting questions.
While most readers would know Hercules and Thor from even cursory stud-
294 C. W. SULLIVANIII

ies of Greek and Scandinavian mythology, it is less likely that they would
know figures from Egyptian or Indian mythology as well, and figures from
Welsh or Irish mythology might be completely unknown to many readers. If
the reader does not know who Gwydion is, does that figure still carry its
mythological '"weight"?Has the original mythic power of the figure persisted
as an archetype, in racial memory, or in the Jungian collective unconscious?
9. With a fantasy novel such as Bradley's, set in an actual historical and cultural
past, approaches like Carl Lindahl's in Earnest Gamescan help the scholar
decode the story. Bradley's conflicts, female versus male and pre-Christian
versus Christian, all have some historical and cultural bases. Works such as
Marija Gimbutas's Goddessesand Godsof OldEuropeand Anne Ross' Everyday
Life of the Pagan Celtscontain materials that explain the traditional back-
grounds of Bradley's novel.
10. Toni Morrison's novels have been classified as magic realism or magical
realism, but not fantasy. But magic realism seems to be a designation cre-
ated solely to prevent mainstream novelists from being called or classified
with fantasy novelists, for while the belief about the ghost in Belovedmay well
be culturally tied to African-Americans, the ghost itself (specifically a
revenant in this case) could easily place this novel in the fantasy category.

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