Escapist fiction

Escapist fiction is fiction that provides escapism by immersing readers in a "new world" created by the author. This "new world" aims to compensate for the arbitrariness and the unpredictability of the real one. Typically, an author of escapist fiction offers structure, rationality and resolution to real world problems throughout their medium. The genre facilitates mentalisation; that is, escapist fiction encourages psychological engagement from the reader. Escapist fiction is often contrasted with realism, which confronts the reader with the harsh reality of war, disease, family dysfunction, crime, foreclosure, death, etc. It encompasses a number of different genres within it; any fiction that immerses the reader into a world different from their own is fundamentally escapist fiction. Escapist literature aims to give readers imaginative entertainment rather than to address contemporary issues and provoke serious and critical thoughts.

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Historically, the arts, and literature in particular, have been acknowledged for its ability to distract readers from the hardships of reality. During the Great Depression, readers turned to escapist fiction as it provided them a mental escape from the bleakness of the economy during that period of time. Fiction books and novels were an affordable and easy means for readers to escape into another world, so people used escapist fiction to provide them with a temporary psychological escape from the realities of their world.

Labelling a work "escapist fiction" can be to minimise it. Those who defend works described as escapist either assert that they are not escapist—for example, that a science fiction novel's satiric aspects address real life—or defend the notion of "escape" as such, not "escapism"—as J. R. R. Tolkien does in his "On Fairy-Stories" and C. S. Lewis's quotation, in his "On Science Fiction" of Tolkien's question of who would be most hostile to the idea of escape, and his answer: jailers.

Genres that can include elements of escapist fiction include:

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