John Crowley’s New Fantastic Space: Reconstructing the Realm of Faerie in Little, Big

John Crowley’s Little, Big is an innovative piece of fantasy writing. This thesis aims to prove that Crowley’s innovation lays the groundwork for new avenues in which fantastic space can be manipulated and constructed. Deep study in Euclidean geometry, modern physics, and occult astronomy reveal a new fantastic space, and a new concept for the threshold of Faerie. Crowley’s fantastic space is constructed as infundibular; with layers of concentricities that funnels his characters to their final destination of self-actualization and the heaven-like realm of Faerie. Crowley amalgamates the boundaries of Faerie and the primary world in an unusual fashion that is noted as Coalesced Fantasy: a fantasy wherein there is ultimately no dichotomy between Faerie and the primary world, as there is no division between the fantastic and science. This deliberate aim to blend boundaries is to establish an All in One theory. Faerie and the primary world oppose each other as antithetical conical space, and Crowley’s Edgewood house serves as the threshold to allow man to access the divinity and vastness of Faerie. Faerie (Divinity/macrocosm) and man (microcosm) exist in and amongst one another; everything is connected and every path intersects, spinning on a hyperbolic plane in this new, quantifiable space.