Although the word “Fantasy” originally stems from the French “fantaisie,” as a literary genre what is now called Fantasy in English cannot be translated back. One uses the Anglo-Saxon term, which tends to prove this is indeed an imported form of literature, as opposed to the autochthon “fantastique,” the roots of which go back to seventeenth-century fairy tales such as those by Madame de Beaumont, Madame d’Aulnoy, or Charles Perrault. During the nineteenth century, fairy tales underwent a kind of disaffection because they were marked as completely unreal, and belonged to the sphere of Romanticism. But in a reversal that only seems paradoxical, the interest in the shifting frontiers between everyday reality and the parallel worlds explored by various scientific approaches to the unconscious produced a whole literary corpus based on the fantastique. The key to that notion, according to Todorov, is the constant indeterminacy that prevents the reader from choosing between the realistic interpretation (this character is raving mad) and the “para-normal” interpretation (this monster really does exist). This preeminence of the fantastique, still very well represented by authors such as Seignolle, prevented to some extent the development of Fantasy in France. Fantasy can be summarily defined as the fictional representation of an alternate universe functioning according to a set of rules different from our own, often based on magic, where the reader experiments a feeling of disorientation and ostranenie, “familiar strangeness.”
It took a long time for France to open up to the Anglo-Saxon production; in the late sixties, the Editions Opta, after launching a “Club du Livre Policier” and a “Club du Livre d’Anticipation,” launched a new series entitled “Littérature Fantastique,” which featured classic works such as those by Moorcock or Leiber. However, these texts were still considered as minor endeavors not worthy of critical interest. Then, in 1972, Christian Bourgois took a risk and published J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, soon followed in 1973 by Jacques Sadoul with the publication of The Hobbit in the science fiction series of the “J’ai Lu” mass-market paperbacks (Besson). This “Tolkien revolution” did influence the whole landscape of the so-called “Littératures de l’Imaginaire,” and was also at the roots of many versions of Dungeons and Dragons, the ancestor of MMORPG (multimedia online role-playing games), that came to France in the late seventies and gave birth to the very active sub-culture of the French jeux-de-rôles (David). Interestingly enough, although most founding fathers (and mothers) of the genre were translated into French by the mid-seventies, the genre as such remains relatively little known. In fact, Tolkien's phenomenal popularity acted as a disadvantage for the Fantasy genre, since most readers and critics considered that, outside The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, there is no possible Fantasy. Even such a literary giant as Howard has remained largely unknown, and actually unpublished, until the eighties (Louinet). Even when France whole-heartedly embraced Fantasy, it relied for a long time on translations from the Anglo-Saxon world; Fantasy was perceived as “non Gallic,” and the preference of the French audience for Science-Fiction over Fantasy was emphasized for a long time. When eventually French writers began writing their own texts instead of relying on translations, the genre developed some specific quirks such as a preference for “heroic Fantasy” over “urban Fantasy” (until very recently, there was little French urban Fantasy, despite the growing interest of a large audience in the sub-genre), the reliance on the quest pattern to structure the plot, and the relative brevity of the texts: contrary to Anglo-Saxon works that tend to be 600 to 700-pages long and organized in trilogies, tetralogies or dodecalogies, the French novels are much more frequently stand-alone novels that do not exceed 300 pages (Baudou). Around 1995, the devoted members of the jeux-de-rôles community, who had been producing numerous short-lived fanzines and “insider literature,” expanded their activities, leading to the creation of new publishing houses, such as Mnémos, Nestiveqnen (that disappeared unfortunately in 2006), or later Bragelonne, almost entirely dedicated to Fantasy literature (Martins).
Within one generation, the ratio between Science-Fiction and Fantasy has changed radically: In the last decade there have been more Fantasy books published, whether translations from the Anglo-Saxon world or original texts, than strictly Science-Fiction ones. Actually, this tendency reflects what is happening on the American market. Despite the fact that these Fantasy-specialized publishers often have a short life-span, new ones constantly fill up the gap; they publish a relatively low number of very prolific authors, in a close-knit but narrowly defined world where creators and publishers meet again and again at various conventions with their fan-base; the Fantasy community in France, while very active, remains relatively small. There are few outlets outside the specialized publishing houses, and the barrier between Fantasy, perceived as a low-quality, second-rate form of literature and what is called “general literature” remains difficult to penetrate. Similarly, between 1996 and 2007, at least fifteen journals or fanzines have made their appearance on the publishing scene, but only six of these have survived for more than a decade. Again, to some extent the present situation in France resembles the one that existed in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. However, there is still no equivalent in France to such popular journals as Astounding Stories or Weird Tales. One of the reasons for the frequent disappearance of these publications is that they remain at the fanzine level, offering reviews on new novels or short stories but little critical approach to the genre. In fact, very few scholars outside Tolkien studies have engaged the specificity of Fantasy as a literary or artistic genre. We received confirmation of this fact when we had trouble finding authors of critical essays for this special issue of CF&FS: SITES, while on the other hand we received several offers for short stories or even novellas! Part of this may be linked to the importance of “young adult” Fantasy, which tends to be still considered as a lower form of literature. Indeed, the borders between adult Fantasy and young adult Fantasy are somewhat porous: many French writers produce works in both categories, partly for economical reasons. This is still more evident in Québec, where there is a huge market for “young adult” series, from Amos Darragon to the Chevaliers d’Émeraude (Tessier).On the other hand, even though in France comic books were originally considered as “children's literature,” French and Belgian comics authors have long exploited Fantasy themes and plots, strongly seasoned with eroticism, to escape this limiting classification: eroticism, mythology and “barbarian” violence give more expressive freedom to illustrators (Berthou). The attraction does not extend to cinema, however: there is no French Fantasy cinema worth mentioning, maybe because of the overshadowing presence of a rich fantastic tradition in the cinematic field.
The first several articles in this issue address various problems related to Fantasy in France; the last three (Chauvin, Lüdun, Lescart) focus on two very representative writers: Mathieu Gaborit has been of the first French Fantasy authors to explore, in a traditional, Tolkienian way, the “secondary worlds” of pseudo-medieval, feudal societies imbued with magic and full of strange, supernatural creatures. Pierre Pevel, actually the first French Fantasy author to be translated into English, is more of a specialist of “uchronies,” parallel worlds that much resemble ours except for a few telling details, such as the use of magic, the presence of dragons or the ability to travel to other, supernatural places. Also, we have also tried to address the same kinds of issues that are raised in the theoretical or historical articles in our interview with Michel Robert, “the most Tolkienian of French Fantasy writers,” who creates his own brand of heroic-Fantasy enhanced with humor, eroticism and French Cuisine (Berthelot and Lescart).
Anne Berthelot, Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, Alain Lescart