The Encyclopedia of Fantasy - Neologisms

Neologisms

The Encyclopedia often invented new terms for theme entries, rather than using headings that may have previously appeared in critical literature. Examples include:

• Instauration Fantasy: a story in which the real world is transformed; the authors cite Little, Big (1981) by John Crowley as the first full-fledged example.
• Thinning: the gradual loss or decay of magic or vitality, as when the Elves depart from Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings. In many novels by Tim Powers, denizens of the 20th century can work magic, but not as easily as could be done in earlier centuries.
• Wainscots: secret societies hiding from the mainstream of society, as in Mary Norton's The Borrowers.
• Water Margins: shifting or ill-defined boundaries used as both a physical description and a metaphor; derived from the Japanese television adaptation of The Water Margin.
• Polder: defined as "enclaves of toughened reality demarcated by boundaries" that are entered by crossing a threshold. Shangri-La is an example, as is Medwyn's valley in The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander.
• Crosshatch: A situation where the demarcation line between two realities is blurred and "two or more worlds may simultaneously inhabit the same territory"—such as in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
• Taproot texts: examples of fantasy literature that predates the emergence of fantasy as a genre in the late 18th century, such as Shakespeare's The Tempest.
• Pariah elite: a marginalized but uniquely talented or knowledgeable minority.
• Into the woods: the process of transformation or passage into a new world signalled by entering woods or forests.
• Wrongness: the growing awareness that something is "wrong" in the world, such as when the Hobbits first glimpse the Nazgûl in The Lord of the Rings.
• Slick Fantasy: a style of Fantasy writing which uses certain specific themes: typically a Pact with the Devil; three wishes; or identity exchange. So named because these were the fantasy stories mostly likely to be published by slick magazines, as opposed to pulp magazines.