Literary notes about fantasy (AI summary)
Literary authors use the word fantasy to evoke realms beyond ordinary reality—spaces where inner emotions, imaginations, and even deceptions are richly interwoven with the tangible world. In some works, fantasy is a cherished refuge against despair, a final hope clung to in the face of life’s harshness [1]. Other writers employ it to suggest illusions or deceptions; for instance, it is portrayed as a capricious trick of the mind that both seduces and deceives [2, 3]. At times, the term signals a playful or imaginative construct that transforms reality into something more eloquent and woven with poetic invention [4, 5]. In every instance, fantasy serves as a powerful literary device to blur the boundaries between what is real and what is dreamed into being [6, 7].
- And now I die, and since there is no hope Of happiness for me in life or death, Still to my fantasy I'll fondly cling.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Love then, is a deceitful fantasy— Bertho is dead—is dead—and yet not dead!
— from The Arctic Queen by Unknown - Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Often when she went out at playtime and saw a luminous blue sky with changing clouds, it seemed just a fantasy, like a piece of painted scenery.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - He was in that rare and blissful state wherein a man sees his dreams stalk out from the crannies of fantasy and become fact.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy?
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Yet not your words only, 30 but mine own fantasy, That will receive no object; for my head But ruminates on necromantic skill.
— from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
