It’s hard to explain exactly what it is you do when you’re an English major. So you just read a bunch of made-up stories and then write a bunch of made-up stuff about those made-up stories? Well, yeah. Sort of. But calling fiction ‘a bunch of made-up stuff’ is a bit reductive. Sure, nonfiction appears to have inherent value, because it teaches you something factual. But what’s the value in fiction?
To Tell Stories Is Human
In 1967, folklorist Kurt Ranke coined the term homo narrans.1 The scientific classification for humans, homo sapiens, translates to ‘the thinking man’, but homo narrans translates to ‘the storytelling man’. And in the years since Ranke, anthropologists and folklorists have expanded on this alternate classification for humans.
Walter Fisher used the term in 1984 to help describe his Narrative Paradigm theory 2 where he asserts that we communicate with others through stories and understand others in how their narratives intersect with our own. And in 1999, John Niles published Homo Narrans 3, a book that suggests narratives are the very basis of all human cultures and unique to our species.
Primary and Secondary Imagination
So sure, storytelling is human. We desire stories, and we relate to each other through storytelling. But narrative does not necessarily mean fiction. Right? Well, I would disagree with that.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, the romantic poet develops his theory on imagination. Coleridge thought of the imagination as primary and secondary:
“The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.” 4
Essentially, the primary is godly. It is the imagination that created our reality. As we try to perceive reality, we try to access the primary imagination. The secondary imagination is human.
“The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.”
The secondary imagination filters, warps, transforms the primary imagination as an attempt to recreate it. In our attempt to tell stories, we create fiction. And so all stories are, to some extent, fiction.
All Stories Are Fiction, All Fiction Is Fantasy
I wouldn’t stop there, though. I would also says that all fiction is fantasy, because fantasy is an inherent feature of language. In his essay “On Fairy Stories”, JRR Tolkien says:
“The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into swift water. 5
We use words to describe the world around us. Language helps us interpret reality. But the language we use to describe reality is the same tool we use to create fantasy.
“When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power—upon one plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes.”
Our enchanter’s power is to use language to create new things beyond the world of reality. In the creation myth of the Book of Genesis, the Creator uses language to create: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” 6 With fantasy we do the same thing. We use our secondary imagination, and as Tolkien says, “in such ‘fantasy’, as it is called, new form is made; Faërie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.”
The Allegory Trap
In his introduction to the second edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien says:
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history—true or feigned—with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” 7
One of the benefits of fiction is that it functions as a sandbox for ideas. Just as the speculative fiction of Philip K. Dick helps us to develop ideas on the boundaries of humanity and consciousness—or how many children’s stories explore morality and maturity—fiction offers a practice arena to develop theories before we unleash them on the real world.
But there’s a problem when that sandbox takes freedom away from the reader and allows the author to dominate. Fiction that is too didactic or too obvious—fiction that creates strict allegory, rather than loose applicability— forgets the artist’s lever. As a sub-creator, authors must create a balance of entertainment and rhetoric—and avoid cramming a message down your reader’s throat. This fiction ceases to be a playground for ideas and turns into a lecture. And I’m not interested in being lectured.
- Ranke, Kurt | “Einfache Formen” | Journal of the Folklore Institute | 1967
- Fisher, Walter | “Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument” | Communication Monographs | 1984
- Niles, John | Homo Narrans | 1999
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor | Chapter XIII | Biographia Literaria | 1817
- Tolkien, JRR | “On Fairy Stories” | Andrew Lang Lecture | University of St Andrews | 1939
- Genesis 1:3 | King James Bible | 1611
- Tolkien, JRR | Forward | The Fellowship of the Ring (second edition) | 1965