The Moon has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for numerous others. The Moon in fiction is a motif in the visual arts, the performing arts, poetry, prose, and music. Works are included in this list if they are fictional and prominently feature the Moon.
Before the telescope was invented (–1608) Lucian's Icaromenippus and True History, written in the 2nd century AD, deal with imaginary voyages to the Moon such as on a fountain after going past the Pillars of Hercules. The theme did not become popular until the 17th century.
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a 10th-century Japanese folktale, tells of a mysterious Moon Princess growing up on Earth as the adopted daughter of a bamboo cutter and his wife, dazzling human Princes and the Emperor himself with her beauty, and finally going back to her people at "The Capital of the Moon" (Tsuki-no-Miyako 月の都), leaving many broken hearts on Earth. It is among the first texts of any culture assuming the Moon to be an inhabited world and describing travel between it and the Earth. One of the earliest fictional flights to the Moon took place on the pages of Ludovico Ariosto's well-known Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516). The protagonist Orlando, having been thwarted in love, goes mad with despair and rampages through Europe and Africa, destroying everything in his path. The English knight Astolfo, seeking to find a cure for Orlando's madness, flies up to the Moon in Elijah's flaming chariot. In this depiction, the Moon is where everything lost on Earth is to be found, including Orlando's wits, and Astolfo brings them back in a bottle and makes Orlando sniff them, thus restoring him to sanity. A fairy tale titled The Buried Moon features the Moon walking on Earth in its anthropomorphic form. After getting stuck in a bog, it is imprisoned by evil creatures. The Moon is then rescued by humans with the aid of an old wise woman.
From the first telescope to Apollo 11 (1608–1969)
The invention of the telescope hastened the popular acceptance of the concept of "a world in the Moon", that the Moon was an inhabitable planet which might be reached via some sort of aerial carriage.
Fantasy
Literature
Pan Twardowski, a sorcerer who made a deal with the Devil in Polish folklore and literature, is depicted as having escaped from the Devil who was taking him to Hell and ending up living on the Moon, his only companion being a spider; from time to time Twardowski lets the spider descend to Earth on a thread and bring him news from the world below. Edward Young's poem entitled The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), was a favorite of poets and painters of Romanticism including William Blake and Samuel Palmer. "The Galoshes of Fortune" (1838) by Hans Christian Andersen. A watchman unknowingly fits on a pair of magic galoshes that can grant people's wishes. As he wishes he could visit the Moon the shoes send him flying there. There he meets several Moon men who all wonder whether Earth is inhabited and decide this must be impossible. Back on Earth the lifeless body of the watchman is found and he is brought to a hospital, where they take his shoes off, breaking the spell again. He awakens and declares it to have been the most terrible night he had ever experienced. The Princess of the Moon: A Confederate Fairy Story (1869) by "A Lady of Warrenton, Va" (Cora Semmes Ives) has the "Fairy of the Moon" descend to Earth to save a Confederate soldier from his grief after the U.S. Civil War. She gifts him with a Pegasus steed that can fly him anywhere. After surveying the South and the Union, he flies to the Moon, meets the king of the Moon and his people, falls in love with the princess, and helps their kingdom fight off an invasion of Union soldiers arriving in balloons. In Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska's Living Grave: A Ukrainian Legend [Zhyva Mohyla: Ukrainska Lehenda], first published in 1889, the Moon is often referred as the 'kozak (cossack) sun'. Johnny Gruelle's 1922 children's book, The Magical Land of Noom, relates the adventures of two Earth children among the inhabitants of the far side of the Moon. Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien was written in 1925 to console his son Michael, then four years old, for the loss of a beloved toy dog. In the story, the dog has flown to the Moon and had a whole series of amusing adventures there. The story was only published posthumously. In addition, Isil and the guidesman Tilion in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth cosmology are based in Tolkien's familiarity with Norse and Gaelic myths of the Moon.