Introduction: Cultural Work (Essay‪)‬

ONE OF THE MOST USEFUL TOOLS FOR FANTASY SCHOLARS SEEMS AT FIRST to have little to do with the fantastic. It is the idea of cultural work, a phrase introduced in Jane Tompkins's revolutionary Sensational Designs (1985). In this book, Tompkins invites us to look at literature--she is focusing on classic American literature of the nineteenth century--not in terms of what it is or even what it says but rather what it does. This shift in perspective allows us to set aside questions of form and meaning (which is surprisingly unstable and reader-dependent even in familiar texts like Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown") and look instead at performance, to think of a literary text as an action instead of an aesthetic object. Why is this useful in looking at the fantastic in literature and other arts? Because it redefines the literary canon as something situated in history and therefore subject to political jockeying and changes in fashion. Tompkins looks at writers like Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe to see how literary reputations can be manipulated to advance particular agendas. We can't designate any particular work as great, she suggests, without qualifying: great for whom? Who exactly are the readers that most appreciate the work, how do they read it, and what do they bring to it? Modernist criteria such as irony and complexity require a particular privileged circumstance; those facing dire poverty or injustice tend to prefer directness and engagement.