The criticism of fantasy

Why is it that modern literary critics tend to ignore both fantasy and poetry, but most especially fantasy poetry? Patrick Murphy, in the forward to Poetic Fantastic suggests, "Recently, we have witnessed a beginning of critical acceptance of the fantastic with 'authorities' such as Robert Scholes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Theodore Ziolkowski (a past president of the Modern Language Association), writing on it. But discussion has been limited primarily to prose" (xi). For some reason, there is still a strong opposition to the examination of fantastic literature in academia.

For fantastic literature generally, there appear to be two reasons, both related to fantasy's purpose of escape: The first is that fantastic literature is not worthy of attention because it is a genre embraced by the general populace. That is to say that our culture looks down with puritanical derision at anything designed and operating primarily to give pleasure. The second and opposite reason is summed up well by the following quote: "Given this resistance of fantasy, to narrow categorization and definition, it might seem self-defeating to attempt to produce a critical study which proposes to 'schematize' or 'theorize' about fantasy in literature and thereby to militate against escapism or a simple pleasure principle" (Jackson 2). So we must not attempt to examine fantastic literature either because it is 'escapist' literature that is unworthy of our attention or because it is 'escapist' literature that we are unworthy to examine.

Even with a recovery of critical acceptance of the fantastic generally, "the tendency remains in fantastic criticism to neglect its poetry, and in mainstream poetry criticism to downplay the presence of the fantastic" (Murphy forward xvii) It seems a futher examination of fantastic poetry is necessary.