Modern fantasy has its roots in Victorian fairy tales and various medieval genres, but it did not really constitute a distinct genre in itself until the success of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in the middle of the 20th century. The path that led to Tolkien has been largely overshadowed by his enormous presence, but we can see the trends and influences he drew on by looking at some of his predecessors. One such predecessor is Lord Dunsany’s 1924 novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter. It tells the story of Alveric, prince of Erl, who journeys into Elfland and brings back the Princess Lirazel as his bride, his quest to find her again after she returns to Elfland, and the consequences of the contact between their two kingdoms. Dunsany was popular in his time, greatly influencing writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Tolkien, and this book illustrates several of the trends that characterise this period of fantasy literature.
Magic:
The defining feature of fantasy literature is that it contains some element of the supernatural. Whether it be through deities, monsters, magic, or some other impossibility made real, fantasy presents us with a world that is in some way enchanted. Therefore the history of fantasy can be told through the changing conceptions of and attitudes towards the supernatural, through the shifting boundaries between the real and the unreal, between the material and the spiritual, between magic and science.
The magical note is struck immediately in The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by establishing that the everyday world of the story exists alongside the “lands of faerie”, or Elfland. Before Tolkien, there were very few examples of stories taking place in “secondary worlds” that existed completely autonomously from the real world. Instead, the setting was recognisably the real world with supernatural elements added, or there was a clear distinction within the story between the everyday world and the domain of magic that existed alongside it. Dunsany follows this tradition by making a clear distinction between the human world and the magic Elfland. His characters can move between the everyday world and the lands of faery, but the connection between the two is not one of geography. Rather, the symbolic nature of Elfland is impressed on the reader in several ways.
First, it is frequently referred to as a place that is only told of in song. It cannot be found on a map, but can only be entered at the border of night and day, ie. in the period of twilight (throughout history magic has often been associated with liminal or “threshold” times and places, where the usual boundaries between categories are blurred and dissolved). Within its borders, time does not flow as it does in our world, its inhabitants do not age, and it suffers no decay or destruction. We are told that the magic of Elfland can be encountered in our world, but that it has no place in the language or concepts of science. Most never visit Elfland, but it is said to be occasionally glimpsed by poets and other visionaries, and reflected in the songs that this vision inspires in them. From all these descriptions, it is clear that “magic” in this story has a metaphorical meaning, inviting interpretation as a spiritual dimension of human life, existing not in the here and now but in a mythic time and space that is only accessible to people in certain special circumstances.
This spiritual meaning is exemplified by the elfin princess Lirazel when she is brought to our world from her home in Elfland. She worships the stars, praying to their images and reflections, and her worship is characterised by the spontaneous, unselfconscious expression of joy and gratitude, especially in communing with the natural world. This closeness to nature is also signified by Dunsany, in another age-old staple of myth and fairy tale, with the magical ability to converse with animals (exhibited, for example, by the troll who enters our world from Elfland in an attempt to find Lirazel and bring her home).
This picture of nature worship and living in harmony with our natural surroundings is commonly associated with “primitive” or pagan religion, as opposed to the more “civilized” forms of organised religion. But organised religion also exists in this story, in the form of Christianity. It is portrayed as less relevant and authentic than Lirazel’s simple acts of devotion, and is unable to accommodate the conception of spirituality that her magic represents. The priest who represents the Christian church in the story cannot sanction the marriage of Alveric and Lirazel because, as a native of Elfland, she is beyond salvation; Elfland, and the dimension of life it represents, is not recognised by the constricting forms of established religion.
Elfland is also characterised as a place accessible principally to the young; Alveric finds it easily at the beginning of the story, when he is a young man caught up in the quest for adventure and romantic love, but cannot repeat the accomplishment as an older man. Dunsany is illustrating the stultifying effects that age and the passage of time can have on spiritual and artistic vitality, which he links thematically with the eternal, unchanging perfection of Elfland.
Narrative Elements:
Folk and fairy tales are the immediate ancestors of modern fantasy, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter in many ways feels like a traditional fairy tale. This is principally attributable to the language and style Dunsany employs (see below), but the plot also borrows several common fairy tale tropes, such as the quest of the prince to win his bride and ascend to the title of his kingship, and the fairies that appear auspiciously at the christening of the new heir to the throne. As ever with fantasy literature, we are not being asked to read this as we would a realistic historical account. The unreality is the point. Markers of fairy tale tell us that we are dealing with archetypal characters and mythic themes.
Medievalism:
Modern fantasy literature was heavily influenced by medieval sagas and romances (where “romance” refers to a popular genre of prose and verse that featured tales of knights, warfare, adventure, and chivalry). Authors like William Morris (The Well at the World’s End, The Wood Beyond the World), and later Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, borrowed elements of the setting, themes and style of these genres to create a sense of history and to revive a tradition that had died out with the rise of realism and the modern novel. The King of Elfland’s Daughter reveals this influence in its medieval setting, complete with feudal political structure, Christian population, and pre-industrial level of technology. More specifically, and again like Tolkien after him, Dunsany uses elements from Norse/Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian culture, including trolls, runes, and the Anglo-Saxon root of the word for “elf” in the name of his protagonist (Alveric).
Style:
The medieval and fairy tale ancestry of this story is discernible in several elements of Dunsany’s style. In addition to a certain archaic flavour to the language, we find storytelling conventions and techniques common to fairy tales, such as:
- A sentence structure based on independent clauses strung together linearly, like beads on a string, by simple conjunctions (usually “and”), rather than utilising dependent clauses embedded one within the other. The result is a momentum from one clause to the next that propels the reader along from start to finish. This simple technique is firmly associated with an archaizing style, which I suspect has a lot to do with the distinctive rhythms of the King James Bible which has had such a pervasive influence on English literature (“...and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said…” etc). Therefore, and especially when combined with the other stylistic features described below, this technique establishes an exotic, fairy tale atmosphere very effectively. (When combined with different subject matter and the right diction, it is also instrumental in the “high heroic” style that mimics the medieval romances, and which Tolkien was later to so effectively deploy, as in this passage from the end of The Two Towers, Book V, chapter 5: “For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.”)
- The frequent repetition of certain phrases and descriptions (such as the recurring designation of Elfland as the “place that is only told of in song”, or of our world as “the fields we know”). Such oft-repeated phrases act like incantations, imbuing the things so described with a mysterious quality and power.
- Thinly drawn characters, with very little description given of their inner lives. Again, the effect is to present them as archetypal or mythic characters, rather than real people. This is also achieved by a relative scarcity of dialogue; it is as if we are being distanced from the story to see its symbolic nature, rather than being caught up in it as participants.
- An ornate, poetic use of language and imagery. This further draws the focus away from realism, heightening the dreamlike, fantastic atmosphere of the story.
The combination of poetic language, incantatory phrasing, and fairy tale atmosphere has the effect of casting a spell over the reader, creating a sense of the mystic and the mysterious. Literary spell-casting can be effective, but it is hard to sustain over long stretches of prose. Beautiful as the writing often is, the effect does tend to wear off after a while, and the simple sentence structure, in addition to the long passages of description unalleviated by dialogue, can gradually shift from enchanting to wearying.
The King of Elfland’s Daughter is an extended, poetic fairy tale that uses the element of magic to represent the entrance into our earthly lives of a spiritual dimension of experience. In its medieval setting and deliberately archaic style it illustrates some of the major trends in the development of fantasy literature.
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