ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses traditional literature and then sketch the changes in cultural outlook that made realism possible. It also considers why realism has been so limited a phenomenon, historically speaking. The chapter further looks at atleast four of the kinds of literature that are wrestling with the problem of meaning. Several theorists of fantasy use so narrow a definition that they claim fantasy to be a post-Enlightenment phenomenon. The process involved in fantasy, though called by different terms, is very much present in traditional society. A traditional society is one sustained in its values by a common mythology. Man's highest aim in traditional society was to depart from what we would call consensus reality, the everyday dull detail, in order to imitate a state we would call privileged fantasy. Mircea Eliade points out that reality in a traditional society is entirely different from reality in our own.
