The word fantasy originated from the Greek word “phantasia,” which describes any sort of imaginary manifestation. The modern fantasy genre is less than 200 hundred years old and can be traced back all the way to ancient mythology of Greece, Rome, Germany, and other cultures. These tales included epic poems, tales of ancient gods, romance stories of the middle ages, fairy tales, and artistic and scientific revolutions of the Renascence. While the fantasy genre got its influence from all over the world, most of its influence came from the U.S. and the U.K. The oldest surviving English epic poem is Beowulf from 700 AD, a story that involves witches, monsters, and dragons.
Many works before the 19th century didn’t have a clear boundary between fantasy and other genres. For instance, William Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and Macbeth have fantasy elements, but aren’t considered part of the fantasy genre, they’re considered tragedies where the fantastic serves as a convenient plot device. Works of Shakespeare that would be put into the fantasy genre is A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.
Children’s fairy tales written by the brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault influenced the development of the fantasy genre, with many of Perrault’s stories becoming fairy tale staples. Fantasy stories for both children and adults first appeared with stories by Hans Christen Andersen and Lewis Carrol, who added magic to the present day in their stories. This helped distinguish the classic fantasy literature from the classic fairy tail, or in other words, removed some levels of a moral lesson.
During the time Grimm’s Fairy Tales were becoming popular, Romantic writers were experiencing the Gothic Revival. These writers began to critique modern civilization by stating that sophistication had allowed people to forget about the fantastic and that it had to be re-inserted into life with Gothic fairy tales to save humanity. In the Gothic fairy tales of the 19th century, the fantastic existed in parallel worlds that were separate from our own. This was to symbolize our estrangement from the fantastic. Ludwig Tieck wrote “The Elves” in 1846, a Gothic fairy tale meant to critique modern civilization. Michael Ende’s “The Neverending Story” would make these same in the 20th century.