Fantastic Chronology: A List (1900 to 1949) Part Four

Continued from Part Three…

• 1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams, issuing a
  caution to all lovers of hallucinatory fantasy. F. Anstey’s The Brass Bottle
  toys with the idea of letting an intrusive fantasy get out of hand. L. Frank
  Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz suggests that if you live in Kansas,
  the grass might be greener on the other side of the portal.
• 1902 Kipling’s Just So Stories inject a healthy dose of nonsense into the
  business of fabulation. E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It adapts Ansteyan
  fantasy for young readers. Arthur Machen’s Hieroglyphics explores the ecstatic dimension of enchantment.
• 1904 J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan explores the psychological politics of escapism. W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions and H. G. Wells’s “The Country of the Blind” bid farewell to lost races.
• 1905 Lord Dunsany’s The Gods of Pegana goes in for secondary creation
  on a large scale in lapidary form. The launch of Winsor McCay’s comic
  strip Little Nemo in Slumberland adapts fantasy to a new and exceedingly
  hospitable medium.
• 1907 George Sterling’s “A Wine of Wizardry” sets out a manifesto for
  fantasy in a suitably decadent style and demonstrates that the readers of
  Cosmopolitan are small-town folk at heart.
• 1908 G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday demonstrates that the
  spy story is an unsuitable medium for religious allegory. Kenneth Grahame’s
  The Wind in the Willows demonstrates that animal fantasy is the last viable
  refuge of Arcadian fantasy. Dunsany’s “The Sword of Welleran” attempts to
  recast chivalric romance in the mold of heroic fantasy. William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland demonstrates the utility of leaky portals.
• 1909 Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird demonstrates that fantasy is
  stageable, provided that one takes a sufficiently impressionistic approach.
• 1910 Walter de la Mare’s The Return and Algernon Blackwood’s The
  Human Chord fuse occult and existentialist fantasy.
• 1912 James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold revisits the Irish Arcadia and finds it slightly tarnished. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes provides a key model of the Noble Savage.
• 1914 Anatole France’s The Revolt of the Angels provides literary satanism with its masterpiece, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War in August; shortly thereafter, Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen” illustrates the hazards of fantastic indulgence in a time of great social stress. The Vorticist periodical Blast is founded, taking esoteric allegory to new extremes.
• 1915 Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis
  illustrate the anxieties bred by war. Jack London’s The Star Rover celebrates escapism. Machen’s The Great Return suggests that Wales was never in greater need of a grail.
• 1917 James Branch Cabell’s The Cream of the Jest employs portal fantasy to mock the follies of American mores.
• 1918 A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool” employs a definitive portal fantasy to issue a manifesto for escapist fantasy in pulp fiction. The Great War ends in November.
• 1919 Stella Benson’s Living Alone indicates the need for postwar reenchantment. James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen continues his symbolist satirization of American mores and is fortunate enough to excite stern opposition.
• 1920 David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus modernizes metaphysical allegory. The Capek brothers’ Insect Play and Hugh Lofting’s The Story of
  Dr. Doolittle provide contrasting templates for modern animal fantasy.
  Jessie Weston’s scholarly fantasy From Ritual to Record makes an important contribution to the ideology of Celtic Arthurian fantasy.
• 1921 Barry Pain’s Going Home takes sentimental fantasy to a new extreme.
• 1922 Eric Rucker Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros demonstrates several
  new extremes to which transfiguration of epic materials might go. David
  Garnett’s Lady into Fox modernizes theriomorphic fantasy. Ben Hecht’s
  Fantazius Mallare celebrates the perversities of delusionary fantasy.
• 1923 Weird Tales begins publication.
• 1924 Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter gives Faerie a crucial
  symbolic role in the politics of re-enchantment.
• 1925 Margaret Irwin’s These Mortals and Christopher Morley’s Thunder
  on the Left reverse the conventional direction of portal fantasy in order to
  highlight the moral effects of disenchantment.
• 1926 Ronald Fraser’s Flower Phantoms considers the metaphysical implications of erotic fantasy. Hope Mirrlees’s  Lud-in-the-Mist revisits the symbolism of forbidden fruit. Thorne Smith’s Topper adapts Ansteyan fantasy to an American milieu. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes casts the Devil as a loving huntsman.
• 1927 John Erskine’s Adam and Eve adapts Edenic fantasy to the purposes of modern satire. Herman Hesse’s　 Steppenwolf suggests that the magical Theatre of the Imagination might hold the answer to problems of alienation. T. F. Powys’s Mr. Weston’s Good Wine offers a revised account of divine benevolence.
• 1928 Wyndham Lewis’s The Childermass transfigures Dantean fantasy
  for the modernist era. Robert Nathan’s  The Bishop’s Wife imagines that
  even angels can fall in love. George Sylvester Viereck and Paul Eldridge’s My First Two Thousand Years explores the ways in which an accursed wanderer might profitably employ an extended sojourn in the world. Lewis Spence’s The Mysteries of Britain collates the scholarly fantasies underlying modern Celtic fantasy.
• 1929 Aleister Crowley’s Moonchild provides a key example of occult fantasy informed by scholarly and lifestyle fantasies. Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” offers a tentative template for sword and sorcery fiction.
• 1930 Charles Williams’s War in Heaven demonstrates that genre thrillers
  might benefit from a dash of religious fantasy.
• 1931 T. F. Powys’s “The Only Penitent” suggests that the moral rearmament of the confessional might work both ways.
• 1932 Robert E. Howard’s first Conan story establishes a more authoritative exemplar for sword-and-sorcery fiction. John Cowper Powys’s A Glastonbury Romance explores the potential of reckless mythological syncresis.
• 1933 C. L. Moore’s “Shambleau” hybridizes planetary romance and mythical fantasy. James Hilton’s Lost Horizon establishes a new escapist myth.
• 1934 C. L. Moore’s “Black God’s Kiss” feminizes sword and sorcery
  fiction in graphic fashion.
• 1935 Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr Lao employs a circus as a
  mirror to various hidden aspects of the American Dream. Herbert Read’s
  The Green Child remodels the underworld of Faerie in surreal fashion.
• 1936 Evangeline Walton’s The Virgin and the Swine demonstrates the
  utility of Celtic fantasy in the dramatization of post-Frazerian scholarly
  fantasy.
• 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again sets a crucial precedent for modern immersive fantasy. Stephen Vincent Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” sets up a crucial title fight between the Devil and an American lawyer.
• 1938 T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone provides significant new models of education and wizardry. Mikhail Bulgakov writes The Master and Margarita, knowing that he will be unable to publish its satanic rebellion against Stalinism. J. R. R. Tolkien’s lecture “On Fairy Tales” offers an unprecedentedly robust apologia for fantasy literature.
• 1939 Unknown provides a vital arena for the development of chimerical fantasy. Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds takes metafiction to new extremes. James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” provides a classic description of everyday escapism. World War II begins in September.
• 1940 Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo compile a showcase anthology of international fantasy literature. Robert Nathan’s Portrait of Jennie provides a key example of sentimental fantasy.
• 1941 The United States becomes embroiled in World War II in December.
• 1942 C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters breaks new tactical ground in
  propagandistic Christian fantasy.
• 1943 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince provides a parable of
  enchantment destined to become the best-selling book of the 20th century.
• 1944 Neil M. Gunn’s The Green Isle of the Great Deep wonders whether
  heaven itself might be endangered by the spirit of Fascism.
• 1945 C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce redraws the map of Dantean fantasy in a calculatedly unmelodramatic style. George Orwell’s Animal Farm adapts animal fantasy to modern political allegory. Charles Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve places the war-torn world in a melodramatic metaphysical context. In August, World War II is concluded with an unprecedented melodramatic flourish.
• 1946 Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan sets a new standard in Gothic grotesquerie. Mervyn Wall’s The Unfortunate Fursey lends a new sophistication to humorous fantasy.
• 1948 Fletcher Pratt’s The Well of the Unicorn begins the sophistication
  of American heroic fantasy.
• 1949 Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces maps the essential features of the heroic quest. The Magazine of Fantasy is launched
  (becoming The Magazine of Fantasy Science Fiction after its second issue).

One | Two | Three | Four

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-Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. (Scarecrow Press, 1989)

Fantastic Chronology: A List (1850 to 1899) Part Three

Continued from Part Two…

One | Two | Three | Four

• 1851 John Ruskin’s King of the Golden River provides the cardinal English example of an art fairy tale.
• 1853 Richard Wagner begins his operatic transfiguration of Nordic fantasy in The Rheingold.
• 1854–56 Éliphas Lévi’s Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic provides a handbook for modern lifestyle fantasy.
• 1855 Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” furnishes a key source of enigmatic imagery.
• 1856 William Morris’s account of “The Hollow Land” lays down a template for the design and decoration of secondary worlds.
• 1857 Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal pioneers decadent style.
• 1858 George MacDonald’s Phantastes lays down a template for didactic
  portal fantasy.
• 1859 Éliphas Lévi’s History of Magic completes his couplet of scholarly
  fantasies, adding theory to practice.
• 1860 Paul Féval’s multilayered and chimerical　 Knightshade demonstrates the elasticity of metafiction.
• 1861 Bulwer-Lytton’s　 A Strange Story reclaims, with interest, what
  Éliphas Lévi had borrowed from Zanoni.
• 1862 Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” explores the symbolism of “forbidden fruit.” Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière demonstrates that real historians
  can fake history more skillfully and more extravagantly than mere pretenders.
• 1863 Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies explores the utility of phantasmagoric imagery in Christian fantasy.
• 1865 In response to George MacDonald’s suggestion that he too might
  produce something akin to The Water Babies, Lewis Carroll prepares Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for publication, achieving something quite
  different.
• 1866 Sabine Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages provides
  easily accessible imaginative fuel for contemporary fantasists. Théophile
  Gautier’s　 Spirite pioneers paranormal romance. William Gilbert’s　 The
  Magic Mirror exemplifies the Victorian attitude to wish-fulfillment fantasies.
• 1867 Henrik Ibsen’s　 Peer Gynt demonstrates the difficulty of putting
  fantasy on stage.
• 1869 Jean Ingelow’s　 Mopsa the Fairy exemplifies the sentimental aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.
• 1870 Frank R. Stockton’s Ting-a-Ling founds an American tradition of
  children’s fantasy.
• 1871 Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass takes “nonsense” to new extremes of logical effect.
• 1872 George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin exemplifies the
  darker aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.
• 1874 Gustave Flaubert publishes the revised version of The Temptation
  of Saint Anthony, featuring a more comprehensively modernized image of
  the Devil.
• 1876 Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark gives nonsense its verse epic.
• 1877 Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled lays the foundation for a scholarly and lifestyle fantasy of unprecedented complexity. Mrs. Molesworth’s
  The Cuckoo Clock refines didactic portal fantasy for children.
• 1878 Max Adeler’s “Mr Skinner’s Night in the Underworld” adds an
  American irreverence to humorous fantasy.
• 1880 Vernon Lee’s “Faustus and Helena” sets out a new theory of the
  functions of the supernatural in literature.
• 1882 F. Anstey’s Vice Versa employs humorous fantasy to expose the follies and impostures of Victorian attitudes. Gilbert and Sullivan’s light
  opera Iolanthe arranges a cultural exchange between the fairy court and the
  House of Lords. Wagner’s heavy opera “Parsifal” completes the set of his
  mythical dramatizations.
• 1883 Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio explains the difficulties involved in becoming human.
• 1884 Oscar Wilde’s “The Sphinx” takes a tour of the cosmos of the contemporary imagination.
• 1886 Rider Haggard’s She takes the lost race story into new fantastic territory. Marie Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds pretends to revitalize religious fantasy while luxuriating in wish fulfillment.
• 1887 Oscar Wilde’s account of “The Canterville Ghost” sophisticates the
  humorous ghost story.
• 1888 Richard Garnett’s The Twilight of the Gods displays the scope of
  contes philosophiques dressed with a sharp satirical wit and a blithely
  decadent style. Robert Louis Stevenson’s　 Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and
  Mr. Hyde adds a new dimension to moralistic fantasy. A. E. Waite’s Elfin
  Music summarizes the tradition of English fairy poetry.
• 1889 Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court breaks
  new ground in didactic timeslip fantasy.
• 1890 James Frazer publishes the first version of The Golden Bough, supplying a mythical account of the evolution of magic and religion destined
  to inform countless historical fantasies. Anatole France’s Thaïs brings the
  ideals of Christianity and Epicureanism into sharp conflict. Andrew Lang’s
  Blue Fairy Book launches an encyclopedia of the sources of modern children’s fantasy. William Morris’s The Story of the Glittering Plain brings
  the Hollow Land up to date.
• 1891 George du Maurier’s　 Peter Ibbetson celebrates the power of
  dreams to activate wish fulfillment. Oscar Wilde exemplifies the thesis of
  “The Decay of Lying” by publishing The House of Pomegranates and The
  Picture of Dorian Gray.
• 1892 “Amour Dure” and “Dionea,” in Vernon Lee’s Hauntings, set new
  standards in decadent erotic fantasy.
• 1893 W. B. Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight celebrates the mystical survival,
  in spirit, of the Irish Arcadia.
• 1894 Fiona MacLeod’s The Sin Eater and Other Tales and Episodes argues that Scotland was also part of Britain’s Arcadia, although William
  Morris removes it to The Wood beyond the World. Rudyard Kipling’s The
  Jungle Book brings animal fantasy to a new pitch of sophistication.
• 1895 H. G. Wells’s The Wonderful Visit employs an angel as a critical observer of Victorian folkways. John Kendrick Bangs’s A Houseboat on the
  Styx credits Dante’s Inferno with New York’s urbanity. Marie Corelli’s The
  Sorrows of Satan sympathizes with the Devil’s aristocratic ennui.
• 1896 M. P. Shiel’s　 Shapes in the Fire and Laurence Housman’s　 AllFellows deploy decadent style in very different ways. Gerhardt Hauptmann’s
  The Sunken Bell struggles heroically with the problems of staging fantasy.
• 1897 Bram Stoker’s Dracula invents a monster of unparalleled seductiveness.
• 1898 Aleister Crowley joins the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
  bringing a dash of Rabelais to the world of English lifestyle fantasy. H. G.
  Wells’s “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” offers a definitive analysis
  of the tragedy of wish fulfillment.
• 1899 Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia mixes Michelet and Frazer into a
  heady new cocktail for scholarly and lifestyle fantasists.

One | Two | Three | Four

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-Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. (Scarecrow Press, 1989)

Fantastic Chronology: A List (1800 to 1850) Part Two

Continued from Part One…

One | Two | Three | Four

• 1801 M. G. Lewis’s Tales of Wonder collects ballads with a supernatural
  theme, adding several new compositions.
• 1802 Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border provides a significant supplement to Percy’s Reliques.
• 1803 Robert Southey’s translation of Amadis de Gaul imports chivalric
  romance into 19th-century Britain.
• 1805 Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” consolidates the Romantic image of the wizard in its depiction of Michael Scott.
• 1808 Goethe publishes the first part of his definitive allegorical version
  of Faust.
• 1811 Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine and Ludwig Tieck’s “The
  Elves” provide the paradigm examples of the German art fairy tale.
• 1812 Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm issue the first volume of their　 Children’s and Household Tales, firmly establishing the notion of folktales as
  tales told by adults to children.
• 1813 Fouqué’s　 The Magic Ring revives the tradition of chivalric romance within the novel format. Percy Shelley’s “Queen Mab” establishes
  an important precedent for the 19th-century English revival of fairy art and
  literature.
• 1814 The first volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s　 Tales in the Manner of
  Callot and Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl introduce a note of
  sinister grotesquerie into the German art fairy tale.
• 1818 Mary Shelley’s　 Frankenstein creates an important template for
  tales of man-made monsters.
• 1819 Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy
  Hollow” pioneer the invention of American “fakelore.” John Polidori’s
  “The Vampyre” supernaturalizes Lord Byron.
• 1820 John Keats’s “Lamia” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” reintroduce two carefully re-eroticized classic motifs into English Romantic fantasy. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound provides a model of disguised literary Satanism.
• 1822 Charles Nodier’s Trilby imagines a goblin in love with a human
  woman.
• 1824 Walter Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” renders the substance of
  a fantastic ballad into prose. William Austin’s “Peter Rugg—the Missing
  Man” Americanizes a European folktale as an allegory of history.
• 1828 Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology provides a Bible for the English vogue; excerpts appear in the Athenaeum, assisting John Sterling’s experiments in fantasy fiction.
• 1831 Honoré de Balzac’s account of The Wild Ass’s Skin provides a paradigm example of modern moralistic fantasy. Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on
  a Farm near Dikanka give literary form to Russian folklore.
• 1832–33 Benjamin Disraeli’s “Ixion in Heaven” exemplifies the use of
  classical fantasy as political allegory.
• 1833 James Dalton’s The Invisible Gentleman attempts to adapt humorous moralistic fantasy to the three-decker format.
• 1834 The diffusionist thesis of Keightley’s　 Tales and Popular Fictions
  emphasizes the contribution of recycling and transfiguration to the heritage of modern fantasy.
• 1835 Elias Lonnrott compiles the　 Kalevala, synthesizing a Finnish
  “epic” from fragmentary folk songs. Hans Christian Andersen begins publishing his synthetic fairy tales.
• 1836 Théophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde” breaks new ground in erotic
  fantasy. Gogol’s “The Nose” reinvents absurdist satire.
• 1837 Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion provides a significant example of an
  allegorical fairy romance with elements of heroic fantasy. Nathaniel
  Hawthorne’s “Dr Heidegger’s Experiment” assists the foundation of an
  American tradition of fantastic　 contes philosophiques. Andersen’s “The
  Little Mermaid” warns young women of the dangers of standing on their
  own two feet.
• 1838 John Sterling’s The Onyx Ring attempts to found an English tradition of experimental contes philosophiques in novel form.
• 1839 Captain Marryat’s account of　 The Phantom Ship transfigures the
  myth of the Flying Dutchman.
• 1840 Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque takes up
  where John Sterling left off in demonstrating the breadth and versatility of
  the fantasy spectrum. The first series of R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends
  provides a crucial exemplar for English humorous fantasy.
• 1842 Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni provides a key exemplar of occult
  fantasy and launches a thousand lifestyle fantasies. Poe’s “The Masque of
  the Red Death” establishes a paradigm of decadent fantasy. Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” recycles a famous folktale in hectic
  rhyme.
• 1843 Charles Dickens’s　 A Christmas Carol creates the tradition of
  moralistic Christmas fantasy. Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”
  begins his development of fantasy in musical form.
• 1844 Dickens’s The Chimes attempts to strike a great blow for the poor
  but exposes the limitations of moralistic fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
  account of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” aims at a softer target.
• 1845 Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” gives an archetypal form to a
  hopeful modern myth. Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter takes the tactics of parental moral terrorism to a new extreme.
• 1846 Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” lays down a template for modern
  Orphean fantasy. Edward Lear’s　 The Book of Nonsense takes up arms
  against the tyranny of “common sense.”
• 1848–49 Gustave Flaubert writes the first version of The Temptation of
  Saint Anthony, working toward a modern conception of the Devil. Douglas
  Jerrold’s A Man Made of Money demonstrates the literary potential of literalized puns.
• 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Ethan Brand” embarks upon a perverse
  quest for the unpardonable sin.

One | Two | Three | Four

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-Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. (Scarecrow Press, 1989)
 

 

 

Fantastic Chronology: A List (8th Century to 1900) Part One

First in a two part chronological listing of fantastic works situated on the one hand by the marvelous and mythical epics, tragedies, comedies, and tales; and, on the other the slow demythologization or secularization of the marvelous into psychological, nihilistic, and other modes of the modern fantastique. Part one deals with those works up to 1900. I am indebted to Brian Stableford’s excellent The A to Z of Fantasy Literature which details out this history and its main authors from antiquity to the present.

One | Two | Three | Four

Part One: 8th Century to 1900

• 8th century BC The Homeric epics are recorded, establishing the notion
  of literary genius and launching the tradition of fantasy literature. The
  works of Hesiod, including the Theogony, record the wider substance of
  classical mythology.
• 6th century BC The fables credited to Aesop are recorded.
• 5th century BC Aeschylus founds the tradition of tragic drama; his notable works include a post–Trojan War trilogy featuring Orestes, whose
  tribulations are further described by Euripides. Sophocles contributes a
  trilogy about Oedipus. In 423 B.C., Aristophanes’ ground-breaking humorous fantasy The Clouds wins one of his several prizes for satirical comedy.
• 19 BC Virgil’s Aeneid imports Roman ideals into a sequel to the Homeric epics.
• c10  AD Ovid compiles  Metamorphoses, a theme anthology recycling
  mythical tales, including the story of Perseus and Andromeda.
• c65 The wandering protagonist of Petronius’s Satyricon encounters various leftovers of classical mythology.
• c150 Lucian satirizes traveler’s tales in the “True History” and writes
  “Lucius; or, The Ass,” a licentious tale.
• c165 Apuleius’s transfiguration of Lucian’s “Lucius,” The Golden Ass,
  elaborates the story considerably, interpolating the original allegory of
  “Cupid and Psyche.”
• c425 Longus writes the Arcadian fantasy Daphnis and Chloe.
• c725 Beowulf, written in a language ancestral to English, provides a key
  example of a local hero-myth.
• c850 The Voyage of St. Brendan offers an account of an Irish expedition
  to a series of marvelous islands, providing a popular exemplar of a traveler’s tale with quest elements.
• c1090 The Elder Edda provides a poetic version of the foundations of
  Nordic fantasy.
• c1130 The earliest surviving manuscript of The Song of Roland, transfigures the defeat of Charlemagne’s army by Basque forces in 778, describing a valiant but hopeless rearguard action by Roland and his comrades.
• c1135 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pioneering exercise in scholarly fantasy,
  History of the Kings of Britain, supplies the primal seed of Arthurian fantasy. Geffrei Gaimar’s similarly imaginary History of the English includes
  the story of Havelok the Dane.
• c1165 A letter is allegedly received by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, signed by Prester John, the ruler of a Christian kingdom in
  India. The fake letter—an instrument of propaganda intended to drum up
  support for the Crusades—is widely copied, its account of Prester John’s
  kingdom provoking a good deal of scholarly fantasy.
• c1170 Marie de France produces her Breton lays, many of which employ
  the Arthurian court as a backcloth; Sir Orfeo hybridizes Arthurian romance
  with the classical materials that provide the other major inspiration of
  French verse romance. A clerk known as Thomas writes The Romance of
  Horn, an account of unjust dispossession followed by heroic exploits, culminating in eventual reinstatement. The earliest texts composing the Roman de Renart lay the foundations of modern animal fantasy in their elaboration of fabular accounts of Reynard the Fox.
• c1185 Chrétien de Troyes dies, leaving The Story of the Grail (aka Perceval) tantalizingly unfinished and awkwardly entangled with the similarly
  unfinished Gawain, provoking the production of thousands of literary fantasies and hundreds of scholarly fantasies.
• c1210 Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzifal imports Chrétien’s account of
  the grail into German, co-opting Prester John as the grail’s guardian and
  making him a cousin of Parzifal’s son Lohengrin. A French Cistercian
  monk expands Chrétien’s story vastly in The Quest of the Holy Grail, making the grail quest a major endeavor of Arthur’s court.
• c1220 Snorri Sturluson’s Icelandic Prose Edda, together with the Germanic  Niebelunglied and Scandinavian  Volsunga Saga, completes the
  foundations of Nordic fantasy. The French romance of Huon of Bordeaux
  introduces a chivalrous hero to the fairy king Oberon.
• c1225 Guillaume de Lorris begins composition of The Romance of the
  Rose, an allegorical visionary fantasy based in classical sources.
• c1275 Jean De Meun completes a much-expanded version of  The Romance of the Rose, which is extensively copied.
• c1298 The death of Jacobus de Voragine, the compiler of The Golden Legend and the inspiration of much subsequent Christian fantasy.
• c1300 The White Book of Rhydderch provides the earliest written source
  for the substance of Celtic fantasy.
• c1307 13th October: Knights Templar throughout France are arrested,
  charged with heresy, and tortured by crown inquisitors to force confessions, providing the seeds of countless secret histories and fantasies of diabolism.
• c1320 Dante’s Divine Comedy provides a key model for afterlife fantasy.
• c1355 The Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville exemplifies
  the fantasized traveler’s tale.
• c1370 The story of Gawain and the Green Knight provides a key exemplar of English Arthuriana and a significant exercise in obscure allegory.
• c1375 The Red Book of Hergest adds the second foundation stone of
  Celtic fantasy; it includes “Peredur of Evrawc,” which recycles Chrétien’s
  Perceval.
• c1387 Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales introduces fantasy—as
  well as naturalism—into the nascent tradition of English literature; the
  tales display a clear understanding of the various functions of calculated
  fabulation.
• Early 15th century The first version of the chivalric fantasy Amadis of
  Gaul is written, probably in Portugal; the original is lost but serially expanded versions in Spanish and French boost the novel-length version to
  international popularity.
• 1485 Le Morte d’Arthur, bylined Thomas Malory, refashions the massive
  body of Anglo-Norman Arthuriana into a continuous and more-or-less coherent prose narrative, deemphasizing its supernatural elements but providing modern fantasy with its most important taproot text and exemplar.
• 1492 Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World demonstrates that not all traveler’s tales are ludicrous.
• 1494 Matteo Boiardo dies, leaving his epic poem Orlando Innamorato
  unfinished.
• 1515 The lifestyle fantasist styling himself “Nostradamus” publishes his
  first set of quatrains, laying down a rich vintage for future scholarly fantasists.
• 1516 Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso picks up where Boiardo left
  off, taking chivalric romance to new extremes of elaboration and exoticism, spicing them with sophisticated wit.
• 1532 François Rabelais’s  Pantagruel begins a series of parodic satires
  that provides a crucial exemplar for Swiftian satire and Voltairean contes
  philosophiques, and for lifestyle fantasists avid to adopt the guiding motto
  of the Abbey of Thelema (“Do As Thou Wilt”).
• 1550 Gianfrancesco Straparola’s  Nights offers literary versions of 20
  folktales, including texts of Puss-in-Boots and Beauty and the Beast.
• 1587 Johann Spies publishes a fantasized account of the career of an obscure German scholar, founding the genre of Faustian fantasy.
• 1590 Edmund Spenser publishes the first part of The Faerie Queene, allegorizing contemporary culture in the form of a fairy romance. Sir Philip
  Sidney performs a similar allegorical service for the myth of Arcadia.
• 1593 Christopher Marlowe is murdered, leaving behind  The Tragical
  History of Dr. Faustus, a transfiguration of Spies’s Faust Book.
• 1595 William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a new
  blueprint for English fairy literature.
• 1605 Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote pillories chivalric romance as
  a kind of folly, but concedes that if nostalgia is a mental disease there is a
  tragic dimension in its cure.
• 1611 Shakespeare’s The Tempest produces a key model of the figure of
  the Enchanter—an important archetype of philosophically inclined wizards—and supplies him with an equally influential exemplary household.
• 1634 Giambattista Basile’s  Pentamerone recycles many folktales
  recorded by Straparola and adds many others, including versions of Snow
  White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.
• 1654 Justus van den Vondel’s epic drama of the rebellion in heaven, Lucifer, is couched as a complaint against Puritanism.
• 1667 John Milton’s epic account of the rebellion in heaven,  Paradise
  Lost, turns the ideological tables on Vondel.
• 1668 Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables recycles works by Aesop and Pilpay,
  supplementing them with many new examples in a more cynical and satirical vein.
• 1678–79 The first part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress revives and
  modernizes the tradition of medieval Christian allegory.
• 1691 Robert Kirk writes his account of  The Secret Commonwealth of
  Elves, Fauns and Fairies, which languishes unpublished until 1893.
• 1696–98 Madame d’Aulnoy’s sophisticated satirical fairy tales found a
  fanciful tradition in French literature.
• 1697 Charles Perrault’s collection of moralistic tales adapts folklore to
  the function of “civilizing” children.
• 1701 Antoine Galland’s translation of the adventures of Sinbad the
  Sailor adds a vital new element to Madame d’Aulnoy’s brand of fantasy.
• 1704–16 Galland’s  Thousand and One Nights provides the foundation
  stone of Arabian fantasy.
• 1707 Alain-René Lesage’s Asmodeus; or, The Devil on Two Sticks displays considerable sympathy for the eponymous devil and provides an important model for supernaturally assisted tours.
• 1726 Jonathan Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver sets a crucial precedent for English satirical fantasy.
• 1730 The posthumous publication of tales by the exiled Count Anthony
  Hamilton—who had died in 1720—provides significant exemplars for
  French writers of Gallandesque satires and entertainments.
• 1746 Voltaire’s “The World as It Is” pioneers the tradition of fanciful
  contes philosophiques.
• 1752 Sir Francis Dashwood establishes the Friars of St. Francis of
  Wycombe (nicknamed the Hell-Fire Club by its detractors) at Medmenham Abbey, setting an important precedent for modern lifestyle fantasists.
• 1757 Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
  Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful considers the venturesome exercise of
  the imagination as a psychological necessity.
• 1764 James Ridley imports Gallandesque fantasy into English in Tales of
  the Genii, bylined Charles Morell. Horace Walpole represents the moralistic Gothic fantasy The Castle of Otranto as a translation of an Italian manuscript.
• 1765 Thomas Percy’s  Reliques of Ancient English Poetry provides a
  classic compendium of English ballads.
• 1768 Voltaire’s “The Princess of Babylon” leavens a  conte
  philosophique with fantasy for entertainment’s sake.
• 1772 Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love provides a crucial example of
  sympathy for a seductive devil.
• 1782 Johann Musäus issues the first volume of his collection of German
  Folktales, prompting the brothers Grimm to start their collection.
• 1785 Rudolf Eric Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen provides the tall story
  with its literary paradigm.
• 1786 William Beckford’s Vathek gives Arabian fantasy a decadent twist.
• 1787 Charles Garnier’s collection of  Imaginary Voyages is launched,
  providing a library of philosophically informed traveler’s tales.
• 1793 William Blake publishes the first of his “prophetic books.”
• 1795 Johann von Goethe publishes his Märchen, providing a key model
  for the “art fairy tale.”
• 1797 Ludwig Tieck’s “The Faithful Eckhart” transfigures material from
  Musäus to create a new German hero-myth.
• 1798 Nathan Drake’s Literary Hours describes the “sportive” element of
  Gothic fiction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s  The Rime of the Ancient
  Mariner appears in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, exemplifying the
  fantastic aspect of British Romanticism.
• 1799 William Godwin’s  St. Leon introduces moralistic alchemical romance to the medium of the three-decker novel.

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-Stableford, Brian. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. (Scarecrow Press, 1989)