Robert Tally Jr., a foremost authority on geocriticism, claims in “Tolkien’s Geopolitical Fantasy” that the utopian urges of the Twentieth Century “emerge in the form of what Herbert Marcuse called ‘the scandal of qualitative difference,’ a radical alterity that establishes a profound break with the status quo.” But, I would argue that utopianism in the fantastic is often driven by a false narrative about the status quo and an insistence on strict colonial order. Texts often respond in fearful conservativism or, less often, in hopeful cosmopolitanism. In both cases, fantasyland has been the ideological battleground—complete with carefully delineated lines—for our essentialist, racist concerns over miscegenation and cultural difference. The utopia of many early fantastic stories involves a clear physical and social delineation between the races and clear spatial boundaries as well. Dwarves lived under the mountain. Elves in the woods. Humans were often depicted as newcomers who muddy the waters with their poor sense of space and tendency toward interbreeding. After all, half-elf almost always implied the other half was human because what other race would commit such an act. More recent fantasy texts both challenge and uphold these old utopian notions. This paper means to track the diaspora of these fantasy races through the history of the fantastic and to look forward to where we might go in the future.
About the presenterBrian Russell Lutz
Brian Lutz is the youngest person ever named Poet Laureate of Bucks County. A full-time faculty member at Delaware Valley University since 2006, Lutz, an associate professor of literature, has published widely in various local, national, and international journals. His scholarly focuses revolve around critical trends in contemporary literature, millennial poetics, and spatial studies—especially as it pertains to the fantastic.