Is Fantasy a dream or an escape?

[littlemanpoet]

Kalessin:

I don't think that dream or escape are inherent qualities OF fantasy, to which either children, adults or other might more readily respond. Rather, they are qualities of our experience of art (or life) - it is OUR choice to make fantasy literature the gateway to this kind of experience.

I'm not sure I quite agree, and am having a difficult time pinning down why. The following quote from Tolkien's On Faerie Stories may obtain:

Now "Faerien Drama" - those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented - can produce Fantasy with a realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism...If you are present at a Faerian Drama you yourself are, or think you are, bodily inside its Secondary World. The experience may be very similar to Dreaming and has (it would seem) sometimes (by men) been confounded with it... This is for them a form of Art, and distinct from Wizardry or Magic, properly so called.

Tolkien is presenting a fiction to make a point, which to my poor understanding seems to be that written Fantasy is the closest humans may come to the Ideal Art, which Tolkien playfully names "elvish". (For this I am indebted to Christopher Garbowski's article, "It's a Wonderful Life" as Faerian Drama, from Mythlore Magazine, issue 90, Fall-Winter 2002.

I have much more to explain of my thought on this, but my break is over, so I post this and will return.

[ January 08, 2003: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]