A wild deep dive into dark fantasy
Okay so I got curious and delved into the literary taxonomy of dark fantasy. Here’s what I found:
In the 1997 Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute writes:
We define a DF as a tale which incorporates a sense of Horror, but which is clearly fantasy rather than supernatural fiction. Thus DF does not normally embrace tales of vampires, werewolves, satanism, ghosts or the occult, almost all of which are supernatural fictions (although such tales may include DF elements, while some DFs contain vampires, ghosts etc. . . . )
This clearly is an outdated definition. Vampires, ghosts, werewolves etc. have become a touchstone of DF in the contemporary canon — with one important revision: they’re not soulless creatures anymore. They’re humanised.
But it’s useful know that there is argument for a distinction between Horror and DF. Roz Kaveney in the 2012 Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature writes:
DF is a genre of fantasy whose protagonists believe themselves to inhabit the world of consensual mundane reality and learn otherwise, not by walking through a portal into some other world, or by being devoured or destroyed irrevocably, but by learning to live with new knowledge and sometimes with new flesh.
That is to say, DF is concerned with accommodation of the other and endurance of the characters, rather than transcendence (high fantasy) or despair (horror). The effect is bitter-sweet. The sense of the liminal is central and crucial. The Return in heroic/high fantasy indicates a triumph of good over evil, whereas in DF it indicates failure and pathos.
Mitchell R. Lewis in A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (2008) gives the example of Elric of Melniboné in “Whole the Gods Laugh” as a DF:
Elric sets out to find the Dead Gods’ Book, which he believes will provide all the answers about life he has been seeking. He hopes to learn whether there is a god and a divine plan beyond the seemingly meaningless struggle between order and chaos that shapes Elric’s world. He is joined by Shaarilla, who hopes the Book will help her mend the birth defect that has deprived her of the wings her people normally possess. After a brief series of adventures Elric finds the book, but it crumbles to dust once he touches it. Deprived of consolation again, Elric concludes with bitterness, “I will live my life without ever knowing why I live it - whether it has purpose or not. Perhaps the Book could have told me. But would I have believed it, even then? I am the eternal skeptic - never sure that my actions are my own, never certain that an ultimate entity is not guiding me” (Moorcock 1995:
473). Shaarilla tries to console him, but Elric responds, “There is no salvation in this world - only malevolent doom” (474).
Lewis argues that the frustrated quest and the decidedly agnostic themes distinguish DF from the usual consolations of heroic/high fantasy of Tolkien and his epigones. It supports Kaveney’s definition, offering the existential as a bittersweet wisdom, pathos, accommodation of the other (Shaarilla).
Kaveney also dives into the erotics of DF, paranormal romance, and “Template DF” (detective stories), but I won’t go through it here.
Going back to my definition of DF, I find a central flaw. My argument that DF is concerned with harm is contradictory to distinguishing DF from Horror. Explorations of harm appears more in Horror, i.e. splatterpunk. It’s important to note that genres are symbiotic; they don’t emerge in isolation. But my initial notions of DF not just being about horror elements and tone remains true. It’s more about what is done with those elements.
The main takeaway: the definition changes, and will keep changing as the genre evolves.
Recommended DF readings:
Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock
Perdido Street Station, King Rat and Looking for Jake by China Miéville
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
NB: Moorcock is credited with the “dark turn of fantasy”. And Miéville is the most prominent dark fantasist of the millennium, openly acknowledging Moorcock’s influence.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is absolutely definitely not DF. The very literal rejection of the Tolkienesque is what birthed DF. Moorcock called it “Winnie-the-Pooh posing as an epic” and criticised it as the product of a “morally bankrupt middle class” (see Epic Pooh).
Oh my gosh was it heavy. On the same note, not fantasy either, but Any Day Now was also heavy and the ending… I know we’re off topic but have you seen that movie?
The movie beginnings sure got more and more sinister-looking 
