The borders of Fantasia

This is one of the most fascinating scene of Michael Ende’s masterpiece The Neverending Story, a metaphor of the war between darkness and light, imagination and emptiness. Bastian, the main character of the novel, is the perfect hero of every book dedicated to children and young adult (and not only!). As another charming protagonist of the Third Millennium, that Harry famous all over the world, Bastian is a boy surrounded by a lot of problems, the typical problems of a child leaving his infancy and beginning adolescence. He does not like his body and his physical aspect; his relation with the classmates are dreadful, and he is not able to overcome the pain for the loss of his loving mother. In the best tradition of the fairy tale, he is an orphan and, according to Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale, he surely will become a hero, as long to overcome a difficult series of obstacles and terrible initiation rites letting him to grow up, to be wise and lucky. But, as Bastian asks himself, “what’s in a book?”, and – I add – why the books exert so strong an attraction? The answer is simple: while reading we are building a world made of precious words and fantastic creatures, wonderful landscapes attracting us just as a real universe in which it would be amazing to live. Fantasy is a strange cosmos indeed: made of pale shadows and dreams, it appears to our minds of avid readers absolutely concrete and true. We can talk with animals, fly with birds, fight against the dangerous dragoon… as we are vivid characters living inside the story. Normally some particular tools are required to become part of this world: we can mention a sincere heart, an innocent mind, a true faith in tales, and the strong will to belong to that magic Kingdom of Fantasia. As we see, no money, no envy, no wickedness are needed: just going and reading. So we are perfectly convinced each of us could change himself/herself in a pure citizen of this magic land where peace, friendship, honesty flourish. And we would like it quite a lot! Unfortunately, the danger stands at the borders of Fantasia and it is waiting to destroy everything: it is the lack of creativeness, the darkness killing moral values, the loss of hope in the future. And in the real world is absolutely easy to leave all the good things behind to follow cruel prophets of death. So, in our days, we need to restore and keep safe our fantasy, not only for us but for the next generations to which we commit our Earth: we clearly perceive it is the only wall of defense against savagery, barbarity and bloody cruelty. The essays presented in this volume aim at deeply exploring the fascinating Kingdom we love so much, starting from picture books for little children and ending with literature for young adults, with a comparative approach and an European perspective.