Metafiction and Metafantasy: Comic Fantasy as Mirror for the Genre

The Last Unicorn departs from many other classic fantasy novels in its distinctive sense of humor and frequent use of metafictional devices such as anachronism. This chapter analyzes the relationship between comedy and metafiction in the novel, and above all how Beagle has produced a metafantasy that comments on fantasy as a form. While Tolkien forbids in true fantasy the kind of mockery of magic in which Beagle indulges, we see Beagle ultimately arriving at a similar theory of fantasy’s power from another direction. Through the artist figure of Schmendrick and other narrative strategies, Beagle’s metafantasy foregrounds the applicability of fantasy to reality, and of art and story, to the world.