In response to an essay by Sara Douglass in defense of fantasy: (From my comment on Talvikki's DeviantArt journal)
"Escape from the modern world" is not a defense that fantasy fiction needs right now. Actually, right now, "escapism" is its most severe condemnation. I think with her anti-modernity argument that Sara Douglass has argued for fantasy's appeal, but not for its value. So, this right here is a critique of a fantasy apologetic from someone who is herself an apologetic.
No, modernity, rationality, and science absolutely aren't antithetical to wonder. Diving oceanic depths, reaching into far-flung outer space, smashing infinitesimal particles into clouds of light and heat add more to the imagination, not less. Logic and science only oppress the imaginations of people who weren't very imaginative to begin with. Rapidly changing, highly diverse cultures feed the garden of my soul (as Sara Douglass puts it) more than an idyllic medieval village or pristine wilderness. If you look at medieval illustrations, even classical myths and Biblical stories are given contemporary, provincial settings. Peasants thought Jerusalem was just around the corner and imagined Joseph and Mary as better-looking, bourgeois versions of themselves. They were fundamentally incapable of imagining life drastically different from their own. Sarah Douglass argues that knowing everything makes the world seem safe and lifeless, but science isn't about (and never can be about) knowing everything, it's about finding new things. That's as pretty opposite of the mundane as you're going to get with any philosophy.
Good fantasy doesn't tap into some vast, ancient, unchanging archetype, but acts like a funhouse mirror to everyday life. It takes the ordinariness of our lives and exaggerates it into Other, such that we recognize it as truer than reality. Assume that we run with the supposedly generic, Western medieval fantasy world, which despite my criticisms, I adore. Say, a world where the printing press was the dangerous cutting edge of modernity, or women unchaperoned were risque, or armed men weren't that "noble knight" schmaltz but just as proud, vindictive, and tragic as rival drug lords or CEOs. This is a world where its appeal comes not from somber ancientness, but from chaos, change, modern life run riot, not knowing "how it ends", from making all old things anew. Is that world really different from our own? Tap water is boring until we're confronted with the logistics and sheer beauty of a Roman aqueduct's soaring arches. Never mind light bulbs, or microwavable food. Good fantasy makes us see our own world with new eyes.