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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2293816" data-attributes="member: 2205">And I've tried to come at this obliquely as well; I also disagree.  Plotlines are often easily transferrable from one genre to another for certain types of genres.  Granted, some genres are defined by narrative structure: it's hard to imagine transferring the plotline of a Shakespearean tragedy into a sitcom without actually changing the narrative, but I firmly believe, and have stated so earlier, that science fiction and fantasy are largely defined by elements of the settings in which they take place rather than by narrative structure.  This isn't unique to science fiction or fantasy either; Westerns, or any historical fiction, for that matter, are the same.  That's why I'm sceptical of the line of discussion that talks about persistent themes or narrative structures in fantasy.  They may be present; they may even be extremely common.  But they are not strictly required and with even a little scratching, it's not too hard to find works that don't fit the narrative paradigm, or don't focus on the same themes.  Therefore, we're not talking about anything that can be said definitively about fantasy.  We're only talking --again-- about a subset of fantasy.Not to mention a shameless borrower himself, for that matter.  Hamlet, which you use in your example, is a retelling of the story of Amleth, which is an old Danish story from the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus.  And likely, it was and old tale when old Saxo put it on paper for the first time as well.</blockquote>

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