Old School

[danalwyn]

So, as may be surmised by previous posts, I have more books. One of them is a novel I've been thinking about buying for a while. It's got a setup I think of as almost cliche now, a group of men living in a corrupt empire are forced by different circumstances to become outlaws and flee their former lives. Endowed with magical powers and supernatural fighting skills they slowly make a name for themselves and eventually, through their skills, their trickery, and some plain old-fashioned good luck, make a name for themselves as heroes.

I'm having trouble describing it to other people. From the setting and summary alone I would normally refer to it as fantasy, but I'm not sure it really is. After all, if fantasy is old school if it pre-dates Tolkien, what do you call it when it pre-dates Shakespeare?

Comments

[silverjackal]

I'd classify it as folklore or mythology. I actually like fantasy novels because they remind me of mythology and folklore, not the other way about.

[danalwyn]

I'm just not sure what the distinction between the two is. Although folklore might be an apt description, there must be a distinction between fantasy and folklore that is not just based on age of th work.

[silverjackal]

I draw the distinction that fantasy is constructed by a single individual or a few individuals out of whole cloth, whereas folklore is assembled in bits and pieces from many sources over many generations, with real events and people and things woven into it. It's not a rigorous definition, but the distinction is hardly a clear cut one, in any case.

[danalwyn]

I suppose it depends on how clear-cut you make the "real person" piece; after all there are a great many fantasy novels that take into account Arthurian mythology (Celtic and traditional Arthurian mythology is all over the place in fantasy, it seems to be the source of choice). And of course there was all the Celtic stuff that floated to the surface for a time.

On the other hand, the two series I like from that age, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh read more to me like proto-fantasy in that they are written more like novels then most of the other pieces of mythology and folklore that I'm used to. They're also much more coherent from story to story. I'm not sure what that makes them; it's just hard for me to categorize them quite in the same way that I categorize something like The Tain.

[silverjackal]

Oh, but Chinese literature was already very mature by the time those were written. Most folklore is bits and pieces, with the same story retold different ways, etc. Quite literally things like Water Margin are more akin to a modern novelization of of an epic folkloric cycle than the myths themselves. Quite coincidentally I'm reading Journey to the West myself at the moment. Just slowly, and interspersed with other things.