ABSTRACT
The term escapism, to seek distraction from reality or from routine, first appeared in the 1933 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. The first use of the term "escapist", to describe a person who seeks diversion from reality, has been ascribed to John Crowe Ransom, founder of the Southern New Criticism School of literary criticism in 1930. Escapism as initiated by John Crowe Ransom started out as a criticism of modernism, but rapidly turned into a criticism of Romanticism. This criticism of "romantic escapism" then developed into a general cultural criticism of the fantastic and capitalism in the 20th century, as Freudian and Marxist views on escapism rose to dominance. During the Cold War, Western Marxist and Freudian criticism merged into a totalizing Freudo-Marxist critical superstructure, invariably rejecting fantastic artistic and make-believe productions as mere escapism. It is important to stress that escapism was never a technical term founded on actual research.
