The Origins and Development of the Fantasy Genre

This video is a brief history of the fantasy genre, from its origins in the 19th century to the development of the diverse genre of today. This history shows that, with its important social critiques and psychological applications, fantasy is most worthy of critical attention and exploration.

[PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy]

It was impossible to mention in the space of this video all the fantasy authors who deserve to be mentioned in an account of the genre. Which authors would you mention?

[Danny_Matson]

Listening to you talk about fantasy makes me reaffirm why I love it so much. I love the part when you say fantasy is about "nurturing the imagination", and "what could be more human than the capacity to imagine?"

[jarltrippin]

Man, I really hope this channel blows up. You're so insightful.

[TheLibraryofAllenxandria]

What an awesome treatise this was. I have to talk about the definition of myth and what not in my classes when we do mythology. So cool to see the genre's evolution past what I knew it to be. Please do more videos like this, Professor!

[JohanHerrenberg]

I read Tolkien's masterpiece in 1973, age 12 (in Dutch). It awakened my love for fantasy, so the next few years I read nothing but - in English. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, edited by Lin Carter, revived lots of forgotten fantasy authors, like Morris, Eddison, Cabell, Dunsany... The study that became my Bible then, was Lin Carter's Imaginary Worlds, in which he did the same as this video: lay bare the roots and history of the fantasy genre (and a lot more). Recommended!

[milesbeining]

I came from Elliot Brook's shoutout of you and I'm really excited by the prospect of a literature professor's take on fantasy booktube. This video was a great insight on the origins of my favorite genre, both as a writer and reader. Wishing you much success!

[GypsyRoSesx]

I haven’t read much fantasy yet (only a few foundational works) but I believe it’s important. Thanks for this video, it will help me in my future fantasy journey. I will be looking through your backlist to see what other aides I can find.

[kyrilson]

"Brief tour". Good lord. That was quite a long history! Very informative. Impressive amount of information that must have taken a lot of time to research and pull together. It would be interesting to see some deep dives into subgenres of fantasy too, such as high fantasy, sword and sorcery, grimdark, etc. Their characteristics, who started that subgenre, writers in that subgenres, etc. Might make for a good side video series from your reviews. I'd also like some advice from you on poetry if you're at all into it. I'm looking to find some good poetry with a fantasy tilt to it to read once a while. Sometimes I like a read a good poem or two. Anyways, wonderful job with this one.

[navisahota]

I love your deep analysis of the Fantasy genre!! Super informative but entertaining as well ☺️

[RNMcKown]

Great to see a video giving attention to the late prose romances of William Morris as my own encounter with fantasy literature started with Morris, back in 1970 when I was an undergraduate, the very first being "The Water of the Wondrous Isles", followed by "The Well at the World's End" - I read these and Morris' other prose romances in hardcover as my university had a complete set of his Collected Works (this was just before Ballantine began publishing Morris in paperback). To this day these two tales remain my absolute favourite works of fantasy and I re-read them every few years. Birdalone from "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" and Ursula from "The Well at the World's End" are at the top of my list of most beloved literary characters. After I read those two books I went on to read most of Morris' prose romances, as well as "The Lord of the Rings". I came to very much enjoy Tolkien's work - over the years I have also re-read TLotR many times and read the books aloud to my children, but I have always been disappointed by the paucity of female characters in Tolkien.

[xWursty]

My guy, great video! You seem so knowledgeable about the genre and it's easy to see how passionate you are about fantasy. You honestly deserve way more subscribers. I can't imagine the amount of time you put into the research for this video. Also, I absolutely love the 10 different copies of Beowulf lmao.

[mirkoeinhorn]

I was just looking for some of your older stuff and stumbled across this great video. I hope one day you will do some reviews of some of the books you mentioned here. Dunsany, McDonald, Edison, Peake and especially T. H. White who is one of my absolute favorites. They are all soooo good.
And a supplement to your remarks: Following on from the Brothers Grimm, one should definitely also take a look at the German Romantics, especially Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen), Tieck (his art fairy tales), Fouque (Undine) and ETA Hoffmann (The Golden Pot), all of whom must be classified as fantastic literature and are still very much worth reading today. At least through Edgar Allan Poe have also developed their influence in the English-speaking world.

[stevemattero]

POV: an alumnus who loved Prof Chase 5 years ago and randomly finds him on yt...

So happy to see you here and your content is wonderful!

[micah_mudflaps]

This is an excellent little lecture. I’ve been trying to work my way up to LOTR by reading earlier works first. I started with Morris’s Well At The Worlds End, then Eddison’s Worm Ouroboros, Peak’s Gormenghast etc. I gotta say, it’s a shame later authors have abandoned efforts tell their stories with their own form of archaic prose. I think that old-english style really puts an extra layer of paint on the strangeness of an imagined world. Shame it’s so out of fashion.

[smithryansmith]

Thank you so much for this video. I think you may have answered a question I have wondered about for a long time. I've been searching for the writer who first conceived of the concept of a fantasy world set in another world han ours (as opposed to a fiction time in our Earth's pre-history such as JRRT's Middle-earth or REH's Hyberboria). Would you say William Morris (whom I am unfamiliar with) can be credited as the first to create a fantasy world, independent of our Earth's pre-history?

[thefantasythinker]

Wow! This one just popped up in my suggestion box. Great run down on the history of fantasy literature! It would take a much longer class, heck, even a whole semester to really delve into it. I would even like to re-examine the link the between mythical stories and fantasy stories. To me, they are all fantasy in one way or another whether the creator believed it was or not. The reason why modern fantasy authors can mine the depths of mythical literature is because it was already fantasy to begin with. Ha, just a theory of mine. I'm sure you've talked about this stuff more over the past two years, but I really enjoyed this and love thinking about this stuff. Cheers!

[JZETH_]

I hope you consider making this a series. It was really informative. I never dove into the history of fantasy but I’ve always heard that Tolkien was one of the best at adding many different types of mythology and such to his work.

[rohanachase]

very interesting historical analysis of the development of the genre, in tandem with sociocultural history !!

[mrgodliak]

Aha, found this! I love Morris' use of archaisms, it's good practice for me and it helps me expand on the list of archaisms I keep, currently at 1100+ in said list with much help from Tolkien and Morris.

[EcopiuM]

Just stumbled upon this channel and have watched a few videos now. Keep up the great work you have rapidly become one of my favourite youtubers.