Spotlight on the “Anti-Tolkien”: Flatland (1884) by Edwin Abbott

Anti-Tolkien might be a bit of a misnomer. A handful of writers have issued colorful screeds against the Tolkien way of doing things^[1], but for the most part even writers who do not emulate Tolkien have great respect for him. Ursula K. Le Guin has great reverence for him, for example, yet she still decries bone-headed notions such as “might makes right,” rejects the black/white, good/evil dualism of Tolkien’s world, and decenters heroes by challenging our notion of who or what a hero is. Not expressly anti-Tolkien, but surely a world that offers interesting counterpoints to Tolkien’s. To facilitate this discussion of the “anti-Tolkien,” we turn to  Edwin Abbot’s Flatland (1884).

Few people might immediately call this a work of fantasy, but on close inspection, Flatland creates virtual worlds inaccessible by any means except for the mythical, allegorical or anagogical. To appease such criticism, we term Flatland a work of proto-fantasy in the anti-Tolkien tradition. It doesn’t portray a eucatastrophic ending yet relies on geometry in the same way that Tolkien relies on European myth. “Anti-Tolkien” is also a bit of a misnomer, since Flatland was published before Tolkien’s birth. So, though this selection might cause some disagreement among genre die-hards, with it we hope to highlight a virtual world that veers far from the standard Fairyland, thereby expanding your horizon of just what, exactly, counts as fantasy.

Flatland: A Short Introduction

In this section, some of the basic features of the text will be discussed. For a refresher on the basic elements of fiction, see our sibling companion, Surface and Subtext.

Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions is told in two parts. In the first part, the narrator, a square, describes his home of Flatland in excessive detail. Here we see a touch of the traditional utopian novel, not in terms of optimism but in terms of detailed and thorough world-building of a materialist and scientific variety not yet organized narratively. This part of the tale is primarily didactic in nature and serves to demonstrate underlying mathematical concepts. In the second part begins the romance, an adventure tale of a popular type. It is on this part that we will focus, so before continuing, follow this hyperlink to the second part of the text, and don’t worry about starting in the middle, that’s where the narrative begins.

Part 2 begins with the narrator recounting a dream, during which he glimpses Lineland, a one-dimensional space. This part of the tale would be purely in the fantastic mode—if, and I mean if, the narrator were of this world. They are not. Instead, our narrator comes from Flatland, a two-dimensional space. Flatland, as a name for a fantasy world, resonates with Fairyland, a resonance secured by the mention of romances. In the second half, the narrator is visited by a being from Spaceland who helps him to understand the idea of imperceptible dimensions through illustration, demonstration, and copious explanation. The narrator attempts to enlighten others as to the nature of other dimensions, for which he is persecuted, prosecuted, and imprisoned.

A major theme of the book is the elucidation of the nature of the different dimensions. Another is Promethean—the price of bringing knowledge to the people. Yet it touches on all matters, from governance to the family structure. Rather ahead of its time, the text even manages to estrange the very notion of gender roles, despite the fact that our Flatland narrator and by proxy his society hold noxious assumptions about gender. Given this context, how do we read the sexist statements by the narrator? Do they reinforce Victorian gender roles? Should they be read as serious instruction on the best arrangement? Or should they be read as ironic endorsements written under duress from societal pressures and moral standards?

At its pinnacle, Flatland estranges our very notion of reality itself. It does not produce a cognitive estrangement like science fiction; instead, it serves to question the very ontology on which the epistemology of scientific cognitions rests. To estrange the foundations of cognition itself is perhaps the highest function of the anti-Tolkien tradition, equivalent in the Tolkienian tradition to recovery, which uncritically revives a lost freshness deep down things, restoring that which was lost (the Garden of Eden itself). Estrangement, conversely, critically points to a new world that radically breaks with the entrapments of the Enlightenment, of capitalism, of objectivisms of all sorts, of  the hierarchies and power structures that shape and hem our existence. The anti-Tolkien tradition tries not to find a way back but a way out. It imagines new worlds in order to critically interrogate the failures of the models that structure our perceptions in reality.

Flatland: Critical Discussion

Let us recall the previous discussion on Attebery regarding content, structure, and reader response. We already discussed the limitations of Attberey’s understanding of fantasy’s content because he is still operating in the fantastic mode, when as we have seen, fantasy works in a virtual mode, presuming already and subsequently foreclosing the possibility of fantastic hesitation (see chapter 5). Here, the anti-Tolkien tradition is not different at all from Tolkien. They begin with maps and engage in expansive world-building—in short, they have created a virtual world, a world with its own, in this instance imaginative, existence.

The largest difference in content between the two genres is the types of stories upon which they draw. The Tolkien tradition tends to draw more directly from religion, national myth and folklore. The anti-Tolkien tradition has a much broader definition of what counts as a “story.” Following this tradition, even our scientific discourses are a type of “story” that can serve as a model from which fantasy author’s can draw. This will be quite evident in Flatland, which also serves as a primer in different dimensions. One reason for this didacticism has to do with the Victorian mentality regarding children’s tales and chivalric romances. In the tradition of John Locke, such marvelous fictions were considered dangerous for children, so they were made to serve society through education. Yet Flatland is a didactic inter-dimensional romance. Remove the didacticism, and that tag could describe Michael Moorcock’s Elric Saga.

If the structure of Tolkienian fantasy is comedic (celebratory but tinged with loss and pain), the anti-Tolkien is essentially tragic (victory coming at too great a price, too little a gain). In the tragic mode of the anti-Tolkien tradition, there is no change to the essential social order; there may even be a harsh reaffirmation of the status quo, of the futility in resisting fate, trying to change things, resisting the system, etc. It would be wrong to call them cynical or pessimistic; even at their darkest, they hold fast to the belief in Fairyland, to the power of the imagination. But Fairyland is not sanitized. It is not the scrubbed post-Enlightenment world of socially sanctioned stories. The anti-Tolkien does not console. It does not coddle. Like pre-Englightenment folklore, it is as frightening at times as it is fantastic, terror being the inverse of the sublime.

How does Flatland compare here? It could be said to be a frightening book; the protagonist is threatened with punishment which surpasses even that of Galileo’s. He does not succeed in explaining the idea of Spaceland to any of the so-called rational people around him, because whatever logical explanation he might deliver, the jump from one dimension to a higher dimension requires a leap of faith they refuse to make. Fantasy facilitates such leaps of faith more readily than any other type of literature.

It is here we’d remind you that Flatland is a work of proto-fantasy precisely because the text is didactic. It remains grounded in our perception of and understanding of reality; it is part of the discourse on the material universe and its nature. But like Dryden’s King Arthur almost two centuries earlier, it mixes high and low in a way indicative of the fairy way of writing. Where Dryden places folk stories and national and religious myths on the same level, thereby equalizing them, Abbot places the romance and formal mathematical discourses on the same level. If education is the pinnacle of the Enlightenment project, this is no less radical than equalizing Naruto and Jesus.

All that remains from Attebery is the reader’s response. To judge this aspect more concretely, let us turn to a close reading of the climactic and final moments of Flatland.

Flatland: Reading Closely and Annotating Passages

In this section, you will be provided with a series of passages from Flatland. At the end of each section, you will find questions that will test your knowledge of the concepts in the previous section by applying them interpretatively. It goes without saying that there is a subjective nature to interpretation, which is why the concepts from the previous sections will serve as referent and guide. Basically, they’ll keep us on the same page, on the same line of thought.

A metaphor we find useful here is that of the lens. Imagine you have a blue piece of opaque glass and a yellow sheet of paper. If you pass that piece of glass over the paper, for the duration of that moment the paper will appear to be green. It is not green, but we have altered the viewer’s perceptions. In this metaphor, our concepts are the piece of glass. The text is the yellow piece of paper. By the end, the questions and exercises will guide you to a focused, deeper perception of the text.

The first step is understanding, so let’s cover a few questions to make sure you’ve grasped some of the basic features of the text.

Passage 1

Passage 2

Passage 3