Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination - Richard Matthews

This book by Richard Matthews is a gateway to further understanding of the mind and fantasy. I think it's important for me to understand these concepts, facts and notions as my project is very much a middle ground between reality and fantasy. By having knowledge of the past, and theories on the mind and fantasy, I will understand my own project to a higher degree.

As I have done previously, I will be copying quotes that made me think or are important to me or my practice and accompany them with my own comments.

• "Fantasy enables us to enter worlds of infinite possibility. The maps and contours of fantasy are circumscribed only by imagination itself" (page 1)
  
  - Fantasy is only prohibited by the degree of one's imagination, but I also believe that if one person shares their fantasy and imagination, it can broaden somebody else's. For example, the relationship between an author and a reader, and the painter and the viewer.
  
  
  
• "This powerful, vivid mode of human consciousness has been a part of artistic expression from the earliest known oral and written texts right up to the present day" (page 1)
  
  - Imagination and fantasy is absolutely nothing new and it has been with us throughout all of human existence
  
  
  
• "The literary genre of modern fantasy is characterized by a narrative frame that unites timeless mythic patterns with contemporary individual experiences" (page 1)
  
  - Modern fantasy is a mix between myth that does not seem to dissipate, and the modern world that we know now. The Percy Jackson books are an example of this, as Percy and his friends are in the modern world but meet and battle figures from the Greek and Roman myths. Harry Potter is another example, Harry and friends are living in a modern world, but he is whisked away to a place that he could only have dreamt of. The two worlds intermingle throughout all 7 books. When taking this into account, it is no surprise that I want my work to sit in a place between modern and fantasy; modern fantasy.
  
  
  
• "The literary paths of realism and fantasy began to diverge in the 1600's as new systems of learning from the renaissance brought about a rejection of superstition in favour of science and reason ... until the scientific method began to tame and frame the world, the human imagination had had free reign to explain mundane reality by referring to supernatural forces" (page 2)
  
  - As Maleuvre had suggested, science was the reason that people stopped believing so much in myths and religion. I think this is an effect that is still with us today. It is very much the reason that I am an atheist.
  
  
  
• "The great resources of human reason gradually reduced the number of affordable explanations, however, leaving less room for unrestrained belief and imagination" (page 2)
  
  - Everything was being explained by science, and so the need for belief and imagination was no longer a necessity but an option.
  
  
  
• Despite a few stunning celebrations of fantasy in the Renaissance, including Shakespear's A Midsummer Nights Dream, the trend toward a literature purified by reason and reality was unmistakeable " (page 2)
  
  - Fantasy was being phased out even in literature because of how science and logic was taking over the world
  
  
  
• "The widespread interest in the market for stories of real life with ordinary, believable characters grew and flourished concurrently with the increasing dominance of the scientific method, the expansion of the industrial revolution, and the unfolding of related historical developments, including changes in printing and publishing technologies, increasing literacy and a rising middle class" (page 3)
  
  - The environment in which people lived in didn't seem to make them want to escape, perhaps because it was relatively new to them. Now, however, I feel that we are used to it and we understand the consequences of what we are doing through these industrial actions and so now feel the need to escape. Perhaps them living through a new revolution was their form of escape.

I think that this introduction to fantasy has helped me understand the importance of it and the origins of it and how it has evolved.

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