Worlds of Fantasy (original) (raw)

Story Characters, Problems, and Settings Are Elemental

Reading Teacher, 2007

B ooks are sometimes peopled by characters that become etched in our memories for a variety of reasons. They can be strangely quirky caricatures or complex and multifaceted, with all the strengths and weaknesses of real people. There are characters that ring true to life and with whom we can identify. They can be big of heart and imaginative. And although some characters have qualities we might want to emulate, there are others who are rather nasty. We get to meet all sorts when we read.

The Problem of Defining Fantasy Literature

2014

This is an extract from Chapter 1 of Fantasy, Politics, Postmodernity: Pratchett, Pullman Mieville and Stories of the Eye (Rodopi, 2014). "The books are true while reality is lying..." Championing the popular Fantasy genre on the same terms as its readers, Fantasy, Politics, Postmodernity casts a critical eye over the substance and methods of political critique in the Fantasy novels of Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman and China Miéville. Ranging across subjects as diverse as exquisite fundamentalism and revolutionary trains, encountering pervert-priests, dwarf hermaphrodites and sex-scarred lovers and pondering the homicidal tendencies of fairy tales and opera, Rayment develops a theoretically wide-ranging and illuminating account of how the novels of these writers do and do not sustain politically insightful critique of the real world, while bringing intellectual and ethical concerns to bear on the popular Fantasy form.

Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature

2015

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 10.1057/9781137469694-Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature, Lykke Guanio-Uluru Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com-licensed to Stockholm University Library-PalgraveConnect-2015-09-14 vii Contents Acknowledgements ix Acronyms x 1 Introduction 1 The primary authors and texts 2 Tolkien: The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings 2 Rowling: the Harry Potter series 4 Meyer: the Twilight series 5 Analytical aims and methodology 6 Fantasy as genre Narrative ethics and fantasy Fantasy, psychology and iconic mimesis Fantasy as contemporary trend Part I Quest Fantasy 2 Ethics and Form in The Lord of the Rings Narrative voice and perspective Progression in The Lord of the Rings Middle-earth: views of good and evil Boethius, Manes, Augustine and Plato Genesis in The Silmarillion Old Norse myth and Judeo-Christian beliefs Fertility myths The mastery of Bombadil The significance of the tree Characters' deliberations: situations of choice The Middle-earth notion of virtue The role of emotion Completion in The Lord of the Rings 3 Ethics and Form in Harry Potter Context and criticism Ironic distance: the narrator and focalization Progression in the Harry Potter series Progression in Deathly Hallows 100 Good and evil in Harry Potter 108 10.1057/9781137469694-Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature, Lykke Guanio-Uluru Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com-licensed to Stockholm University Library-PalgraveConnect-2015-09-14 viii Contents Evil is unfeeling: caring is good The soul: fragmented or whole? Blood myths and the vampire Transformations: shape-shifting, metamorphosis, rebirth Moral reasoning Dumbledore Harry's moral choice Ethical re-definition Completion in Harry Potter Ethics and Form in the Quest-Fantasy Prophecies and wise old men Morality: nature and culture Phronesis and character Archetypes, ethics and narrative form Part II Paranormal Romance 5 Ethics and Form in Twilight Critical history and analytical aims The paranormal romance subgenre Narrative voice and focalization Progression in Twilight Good and evil in Twilight: ethical parameters Russet and white Bella's pro-death and pro-life 'choices' Vampire ethics Taking life literally-or not Gender change: Bella and Orlando Completion in Twilight 6 Comparisons and Conclusion Harry Potter and Twilight The vampire: blood and soul Mind control Love Shape-shifting and metamorphosis The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Twilight Male and Female Coming-of-Age Stories Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index 10.1057/9781137469694-Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature, Lykke Guanio-Uluru Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com-licensed to Stockholm University Library-PalgraveConnect-2015-09-14 ix Acknowledgements My thanks to the Faculty of Humanities, the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS) and the Ethics Programme at the University of Oslo, Norway for funding the research that forms the basis of this book. I further thank all those affiliated with the Ethics Programme between 2008 and 2014 for professional and social input, and for providing an inspirational environment in which to develop the ideas presented here. I am grateful to Timothy Chappell, Nomy Arpaly, Jakob Elster, Lene Bomann Larsen and Julia Annas for inspiring courses and lectures. Particular thanks to Jakob Lothe for his consistently constructive feedback during the writing and revision of this text, and for his general benevolence, and to Jakob Elster for his clear and precise feedback on theoretical ethics. Thanks are additionally due to all those affiliated with the Nordic Network of Narrative Studies for engaging conferences and professional input, with a special thanks to James Phelan for clarifying discussion on the concept of 'implied author'. I am also grateful to Nils Ivar Agøy and Mathias Sagdahl for insightful comments to my chapter on The Lord of the Rings, as I am to Hallvard Fossheim for feedback on the analysis of Twilight and for interesting discussions on the nature of the soul. I further thank Henrik Syse, Maria Nikolajeva and Leona Toker for their valuable comments on the first part of this book and for their encouragement of my research and writing. Thanks to Einar Bjorvand for proofreading the manuscript and to Palgrave Macmillan's reader for useful suggestions-any errors remain my own. My gratitude also to Paula Kennedy and Peter Cary at Palgrave Macmillan, and more generally to everyone who has in any way helped develop this project.

Critical Fantasy Studies

Journal of Language and Politics, 2021

Many scholars have drawn attention to the affective power that aspects of discourse and practice exert in our social and political life. Fantasy is a concept that, like structures of feeling, rhetoric, myth, metaphor, and utopia, has generated illuminating explanatory and interpretive insights with which to better understand the operation of this power. In this piece I argue that there are distinctive virtues in affirming the value of the category of fantasy, from a theoretical point of view. Importantly, however, I also argue that the qualification 'critical' in Critical Fantasy Studies captures something about how such studies can draw out the normative, ideological, and politico-strategic implications of psychoanalytic insights and observations, and thus become part of a broader enterprise in critical theoretical and empirical research.

Fantasy semantic field: problems of definition

The Journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Series "Philology"

At the present stage of the development of literature the “pure” genre disappears, giving way to different entities that combine characteristic features of two or more genres. One of these relatively “new” literary phenomena is fantasy, ongoing discussions keep going around. The increased interest in it by literary critics may be explained by the constant dynamics of fantasy, which leads to the expansion of its thematic varieties, and hence to the expansion of the reader’s circle (it covers readers of different age groups and different social status). Fantasy naturally formed into an independent branch within the limits of speculative fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, it has origins in the centuries-old tradition of the fantastic (mythical folklore tradition, Medieval, baroque, traditions of the Gothic novel, romanticism and modernism), where it borrowed various ways of reproduction of reality. Despite the large quantity of studies devoted to various aspe...

Why Write Fantasy? A Mythopoeic Conference XIV Panel

1984

Artis ts and Illu s tra tio n s In c lud e d in This Re c o rd Photographer Bonnie GoodKnig ht Ab s tra c t The purpo se o f this panel is to examine some o f the underlying reasons why Fantasy literature is written and why it is worth writing . Many o f us, probably most o f us, as readers o f Fantasy, have been tempted to try our own hand at writing Fantasy at one time o r ano ther. The panelists here today will hopefully be ab le to g ive us some direc tion fo r tho se sto ry ideas we fee l we must try to g et down on paper. O ur honored g uests are Marion Zimmer Bradley, author o f the Darkover series and the Mists of Avalon author o f Lady of Light and Lady of Darkness; Stephen Donaldson, author o f the "C hronic les o f Thomas C ovenant"; and Evang eline Walton author o f Rhiannon, The Childern of Llyr, The Island of the Mighty, Prince of Annwn completing a new series o f books based on the Greek Myths. Re c o mme nd e d C ita tio n Journal Home Jo in the Mythopoeic ...