The VM as Outsider Art

[oshfdk]

So when someone uses terms like "fantasy" and "worldbuilding" in relation to the VM, they could be doing one of two things:

1) Simply saying that it contains fictional elements. This would be true for most human writings in history, and hence would not add something new. Hence, I assume they are instead....

A lot of human writing contains deliberate fictional elements, but a lot of human writing doesn't. The Voynich manuscript could be a medieval science book, or it could be a medieval fiction (or even some strange form of art). So, when people say "fantasy" they could just refer to the hypothesis that VMS is not a treatise or a study book, but an illustrated fiction. And if a fiction describes a self-consistent world significantly different from the reality, I see no problem talking about world building, etc. Maybe this would be a problem for professionals, I don't know.

Would the medieval bestiaries be called a work of fantasy? An exercise in worldbuilding? Doesn't this terminology feel a bit off?

I had to actually look up bestiaries to know what they are, I guessed from the word it would have to do with animals, but that's all I knew. If a story describes certain fantastic elements without trying to tie them up in a large consistent fantastic world, this probably could be called a (fairy) tale, a collection of anecdotes, etc.

On the other hand, what would you call the trip to the Moon from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (about the existence of which I also learned just 15 minutes ago)? It is a piece of a fictional story about a fictional world, if I understand the synopsis correctly.