Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn
Published 2008 · 329 pages · 138,672 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is Rhetorics of Fantasy to read?
Rhetorics of Fantasy scores 49 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Mendlesohn draws on academic literary criticism vocabulary — narratology terms like 'mise-en-scène,' genre-theory coinages like 'instauration' and 'thinned land,' and borrowed critical apparatus from SF scholarship (Clute's 'Encyclopedia,' Attebery's 'sphere of significance'). Readers unfamiliar with fantasy criticism or literary theory will encounter specialist terms on most pages, though context usually clarifies meaning. The register sits closer to 2666's literary vocabulary than to Gravity's Rainbow's encyclopedic density.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- The prose is well-organized academic English with subordinate clauses and parenthetical qualifications, but avoids Jamesian or Proustian hypotaxis. Sentences run long when Mendlesohn traces a chain of reasoning — 'The extent to which the mode of narrative shifts as we traverse the portal from the frame world to the other world influences the degree to which we shall settle into the fantasy world' — but they stay grammatically navigable. Broadly comparable to 2666 in density without its sustained extreme length.
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- The entire book operates at the level of rhetorical theory: it analyzes reader-positioning, narrative grammar, and ideological structure rather than telling stories. Mendlesohn consistently argues at the level of 'the rhetorical position taken by the author/narrator' and 'the implied reader.' Even close readings of specific texts pivot quickly back to theoretical claims about genre and mode. The abstraction level sits between Brothers Karamazov's philosophical debates and Gravity's Rainbow's metaphysical digressions.
- Information density: 78 out of 100
- Every page packs references to dozens of fantasy novels across a century of publishing history, citations of genre scholars (Clute, Attebery, Toohey), and theoretical claims about rhetoric and ideology. Chapter 1 alone references Tolkien, Lewis, Baum, Carroll, Eddings, Bradley, Jordan, Ende, and Bunyan while building a sustained argument. The density resembles War and Peace in its multiplicity of referenced works, but with academic argumentation layered on top.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- As literary criticism, the book states its arguments directly. Mendlesohn announces her thesis in the introduction, deploys it chapter by chapter, and draws explicit conclusions. The reader is never left to infer what the author means — the rhetorical positions of portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and liminal fantasy are defined, illustrated, and defended in plain view. Closer to 1984's declarative directness than to Pedro Paramo's assembled meaning.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Mendlesohn analyzes symbolism in the fantasy texts she studies but does not deploy symbolic layers in her own critical prose. The book is argument rather than artifact. When she writes about 'the thinned land' or 'the portal,' these are theoretical categories, not symbols in a literary sense. The score reflects the near-absence of symbolic operation in academic criticism as a genre.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Mendlesohn writes with occasional dry wit — noting that 'hundreds of Tolkienistas have failed to notice that The Lord of the Rings is not a quest for power, but a journey to destroy power' — but the critical project is sincere and earnest throughout. The gap between stated meaning and intended meaning is narrow. The book argues what it says it argues, without the ironic recalibration required of Nabokov or Saunders.
- Resolution withholding: 25 out of 100
- The book builds toward a clear taxonomy and draws explicit conclusions about each fantasy subtype. Chapters end with summaries; the final chapter synthesizes the framework. Where questions remain open, Mendlesohn labels them as such rather than embedding ambiguity. The handful of unresolved theoretical questions — the status of borderline texts, whether the categories fully contain the field — are flagged honestly rather than withheld for effect.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Organized in clear chapters by fantasy subtype (portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, liminal) with an introduction and conclusion. The complication is that subtype categories overlap and Mendlesohn must repeatedly hedge — noting that some texts straddle modes, or that a portal fantasy can become an intrusion fantasy midway through. This creates real conceptual complexity without formal experimentation. The structure is more complex than a linear novel but far simpler than Infinite Jest's fragmented chronology.
How Rhetorics of Fantasy is regarded
Rhetorics of Fantasy holds a literary regard score of 64 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.