ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It sketches the distinction between phantasy and fantasy, the fantastic and the fictional. The chapter follows the political imperative in fantasy; need to consider 'the changing historical meaning of the fantastic in different periods. They organized chronologically to allow the reader to sample some of the genres which proved popular within a period. As psychoanalysis acknowledges, this universalize model of the self needs to supplement the forms of the fantastic are contingent on the historical and political circumstances surrounding human agents. Topics which resurface over the period, ghosts, money, sexual desire, gods, criminals, idealized places are on the absence. They are discussed by a debate over the reality of present, both in the genres they use and in their inclusion of characters who are sceptical or hesitant. Fantasies are one of the individual's deliberate responses to circumstances which are not ideal.
