Here Be Dragons (24 page)

Polders thus contribute both topology and temporal thickness to fantasy worlds. An anachronism implies that time moves on and the world changes. Polders belie the static impression of many worlds, demonstrating how the present of the story (which is usually but not always that of the protagonists) differs from the past as conserved within their
boundaries. Like insects trapped in amber, long-gone eras are preserved in the polders and extend the world backward in time, while letting the reality of the past impinge on the world of the present. Each of the three polders discussed in this chapter reaches back through several millennia, but the pasts they shelter have different functions in their respective stories. In Ryhope Wood lies the past that we all carry within us, the setting neither a landscape nor a timescape but a mythscape, a place of tales that are in some way eternal. In Djelibeybi, the oppressively primitive past is itself an antagonist to escape from, a distorted mirror image of the Edenic wonders of the Elder Days found in Lothlórien. The elven polder stands as a monument to these wonders, maintaining them while simultaneously mourning their disappearance from the world.

Time can thus be spatially encoded in fantasy worlds; with geography comes history. Darko Suvin condemns “heroic fantasy”
⁹⁸
as suffering from “[g]eographic gigantism.” “[O]ne is tempted to say: the less history the more geography,” he remarks. But he concedes that some fantasy comes equipped with a “secondary or other history,” and he even offers a handful of variations on secondary history.
⁹⁹
It is thus mainly fantasy's lack of connectedness to the history of the actual world (the author's or reader's “historical web of forces”) that Suvin's critical perspective causes him to take issue with. History is inextricably part of the secondary landscape, and not simply because any landscape holds inscribed on it the history of the people who have lived there.
¹⁰⁰
Through polders, past eras are given spatial locations, past and present are juxtaposed, and the journey across the land turns into time travel.

• • •

Borders and boundaries unite rather than divide. A border between two domains would be impossible if those domains were not juxtaposed; a polder boundary would not have a purpose unless the polder were part of the world outside. Both types of thresholds hold the fantasy world together but they also keep it variegated, a patchwork of distinct realities that opens up the geography in a fashion that mere distance cannot do. They expand the world by joining different realities together.

In
Modern Fantasy
, Colin N. Manlove presents a definition of fantasy, a central part of which is that fantasy contains “
supernatural or impossible worlds, beings or objects
.”
¹⁰¹
Although the definition is too exclusive to fully suit the purposes of this study, Manlove's explanation of what he means by “supernatural or impossible” has a bearing on the function of thresholds in fantasy worlds. Originally, he explains that it means “of another
order of reality from that in which we exist and form our notions of possibility”;
¹⁰²
but he later republished the definition and discussion in a gently revised version with an added afterword, in which he also adds that “no extension of nature can arrive at supernature, just as no extension of possibility can arrive at impossibility.”
¹⁰³
Manlove's remarks are concerned with ways of identifying the edges of the fantastic, but they are also applicable when discussing worlds of fiction.

All fantasy worlds have rules for what is possible and impossible, what is natural and supernatural. These rules may not be—in fact, generally are not—the same as in the actual world, nor are they necessarily shared by several worlds. Once it has been established what these rules are, however, the genre's demand for internal consistency
¹⁰⁴
requires them to stay the same. No matter how far you travel in a world, the rules remain unchanged: no extension of nature or the possible will change that. The reality is of a given order, to use Manlove's expression.

The exception—and it is a common exception—occurs when a border or boundary is crossed. On the other side lies another order of reality, a place where the rules
are
different. Extend the journey across a threshold into another domain, and the impossible will become possible; the supernatural of one domain is the natural of another. What is possible or natural is a question of in which domain, not in which world, the story is set. These are the kinds of worlds that Lubomír Doležel calls “dyadic worlds”—and they are often triadic, tetradic, or, occasionally, even more polyadic (such as the place cobbled together by pieces of other worlds in Diana Wynne Jones's
The Merlin Conspiracy
[2003])—where a world's domains have mutually contradictory rules.
¹⁰⁵
Each domain holds another order of reality, even if the domain is only the tiniest of polders.

Stories arise from the crossing of thresholds, and in fantasy, they are widely varied. Doležel points out how, in “the divided world with rigid boundaries, the story of the cross-world journey is of perennial fascination.”
¹⁰⁶
He claims, however, that there are only two variants of this story: that of the observer, who gathers information but cannot physically interact with the other domain (exemplified by Odysseus' visit to Hades); and that of the mission, wherein the human visitor can interact but is bound by some prohibition (Orpheus is the example given). Whereas Vlad Taltos's trip to the domain of the dead clearly belongs to this second category, and Teppic's goings-forth into the outside world could possibly be construed as representative of the first—he only brings back knowledge; his physical interactions are of secondary importance—
the four other domains discussed in this chapter illustrate how other stories spring from journeys between domains. In Lothlórien, the Company certainly obtains information; but the items its members bring with them are of even greater importance—in particular, to the hobbits—during the quest but also afterward. Even so, the prohibitions placed on them are quickly lifted. Visiting the elven realm is a small part of the story, but the polder is a key node in the plot, the effects of which affect the characters and the events profoundly for the rest of the novel. In Ryhope Wood as well as in Tristran's Faerie, returning is of subordinate or no importance; the new order of reality is a place of exploration in which the protagonists remain, forging new lives. In the Abhorsen series, there is, ultimately, no privileged direction of transgression; protagonists come from both sides and move in both directions. The fantasy genre, in which the “cross-world journey” is a common trope, thus offers far more than two basic variants of such stories. Instead, the crossing and the differences between the domains provide a deep fount of greatly varied stories.

Other orders of reality are integral parts of fantasy worlds; the possible
can
be extended, geographically at least, into the impossible. Fantasy stories make use of, or even center on, the thresholds between the possible and impossible, turning the domains into some of the genre's most notable settings. There are other domains as well, domains that are not geographical areas but are certainly governed by very different rules from each other. The next chapter investigates one such set of domains: that of nature and culture.

O
ne of the most intriguing divisions that fantasy literature enables us to rethink is that between the domains of nature and culture. Many scholars maintain that the principal cause of today's many environmental problems, from ozone depletion to the proliferation of genetically manipulated organisms, is the way in which Western society perceives there to be a difference between nature and culture.
¹
While
nature
and
culture
are terms that are both well-known and slippery to define, our cultural relationship with nature is dominated by problems of delimitation as well as of conflicting traditions: Where exactly do we draw the line between nature and culture? Is there even a line to be drawn? Are we not of natural origin and therefore part of nature ourselves? In that case, how can things we do be anything but natural? In the actual world, these questions have become relevant parts of the debate about how to deal with environmental issues; and through the fantasy genre, they may be approached from any number of new directions.

Cities may seem a typically cultural phenomenon, but they are actually among the most interesting, and certainly the most distinct, interfaces between nature and culture. They provide a limit or boundary that is or is not transgressed or permeated, a locus where both sides of the relation can be studied. This is just as true of cities in fantasy fiction. There may well be, as Brian Attebery claims, some “archetypal green world that underlies all fairyland”;
²
but generally speaking, the city in fantasy is neither connected to fairyland nor to any archetypal green world. Its magic is of a different kind, less predictable and straightforward. By investigating the relationship between nature and culture, it is possible to understand what function that relationship has in the imaginary cities, but also to see what fantasy cities can tell us about alternative ways of exploring this important and familiar yet complex duality.

TWO SLIPPERY TERMS

Defining “nature” is an undertaking fraught with complications. In
Thinking about Nature
, Andrew Brennan reflects that given the variety of ways in which the term
nature
is used, a case could even be made for dropping it from descriptions.
³
Kate Soper, in
What Is Nature
?, remarks that the term is “at once both very familiar and extremely elusive.”
⁴
A quick glance in the
Oxford English Dictionary
shows us a term that has accumulated a considerable number of only vaguely related meanings.
Nature
can, for instance, mean “[a] malleable state of iron” and “[a] class or size of guns or shot” (both meanings now obsolete). It is a word that can denote anything from bodily functions in need of a handy euphemism (related to, for example, excrement, urine, semen, and menstrual discharge) to the characteristic disposition of a person. It can even mean the entire cosmos.
⁵

For the purpose of discussing the relation between nature and culture, the most suitable definition in the
OED
is that of nature as “[t]he phenomena of the physical world collectively;
esp
. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations.”
⁶
The last clause brings to mind Soper's point of departure, namely that “[i]n its commonest and most fundamental sense, the term ‘nature' refers to everything which is not human and distinguished from the work of humanity.”
⁷
It is further helpful to consider Brennan's outline of the distinction between broad and narrow (or absolute and relative) notions of “the natural.” The basis for his broader notion is that human behavior is natural insofar as we find the same behavior naturally in other animals (particularly higher mammals), and that human management, production, and interference make events and products unnatural.
⁸
Brennan and Soper are in general agreement with philosopher Keekok Lee, who starts off her list of seven senses of “nature” with what she terms
nature
_nh
(non-human). She defines
nature
_nh
as opposed to
culture
, which “involves human agency and its products.”
⁹

“Culture” can have almost as many meanings as the word
nature
. Depending on which discipline we turn to, definitions will vary. It has, for instance, been suggested that “culture” is “a class of phenomena conceptualized by anthropologists in order to deal with questions they are trying to answer.”
¹⁰
In their 1952 investigation of literature in (mainly) the social sciences, anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn include nearly three hundred different definitions of the term.
¹¹
In “Classic
Conceptions of Culture,” Peter Worsley describes the two main ways in which “culture” is used outside of the natural sciences. The first, oldest, and here least relevant way is to use the term more or less synonymously with “the fine arts.” The second usage “is the idea of ‘culture' as a way of life” which at the broadest level may refer to “almost anything that distinguishes human beings from animals.”
¹²
This is obviously the usage that primarily opposes Lee's nature
_nh
as well as Brennan's and Soper's views of nature and the natural. Daniel G. Bates attempts to define culture in slightly more detail. According to him, culture is the “system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and material objects that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another,”
¹³
a definition that is useful for my discussion.

The duality
nature—not-nature
(or
culture—not-culture
) has some drawbacks, however. The first, and most obvious, is that if nature is that on which human management, production, and interference—“the work of humanity”—has had no impact whatsoever, then precious little nature is left in the actual world. Through the greenhouse effect and depletion of the ozone layer, humanity has affected the entire biosphere.
¹⁴
Humanity's history is one of large-scale changes to its habitats; for millennia, entire landscapes have been artificially changed as the result of human intervention. Historian Lynn White, Jr., points out that the upper valley of the Nile would have been a swampy jungle were it not for some six millennia of irrigation; and both he and Frederick Turner remark on the deforestation and overgrazing that occurred in antiquity, which left the hills of the Mediterranean basin in the state they are in today.
¹⁵
As recently as twelve hundred years ago, the first Maori settlers began the process that would soon turn the deep forests of New Zealand into today's rolling hills of tussock grass. The second drawback is that even if there is something left to call nature once we have removed everything on which humans have had any impact (and, in fantasy literature, there might well be), the duality allows for no shades of gray. It is strictly binary. It would seem reasonable to add nuance to this duality. In
De Natura Deorum
(On the Nature of the Gods), Marcus Tullius Cicero writes that “we sow cereals and plant trees; we irrigate our lands to fertilize them. We fortify river-banks, and straighten or divert the courses of rivers. In short, by the work of our hands we strive to create a sort of second nature within the world of nature.”
¹⁶