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In the Mirror of the Past
These days, we are ever more often confronted by overwhelming events. Searching for a way to understand them, we turn to mythic archetypes still present in our culture. The authors of these essays pose questions about the reliability of the archetypes found in tradition, history, and scattered mythologemes. The essays in this collection deal with the presence of mythic time in modern speculative fiction, such as fantasy and alternate histories, and discuss major mythologemes and their functions in popular literature and extra-literary reality. The authors show how mythopoeic fiction becomes a (genetically) modified mythic mirror in which we hope to see answers to vexing questions, or just a reality superior to the ordinary one. In the Mirror of the Past: Of Fantasy and History is a collection of seven essays by American and Polish authors, including Brian Attebery, Terri Doughty, and Marek Oziewicz, with Mircea Eliade’s concept of “return from history to History” as their underlying theme.
Worlds So Strange and Diverse
This book represents an analysis of contemporary fantasy (non-mimetic) literature in all its richness and diversity, and offers a preliminary definition of the major fields of taxonomical interest, in addition to marking some of the unmapped territories of “fantastic” fiction. In its first part, the book presents an overview of all major previous theoretical discussions of the issue, particularly those by Tzvetan Todorov, Rosemary Jackson, Darko Suvin, Brian Attebery, Marek Oziewicz and Farah Mendlesohn. The second part of the book provides an interesting comprehensive taxonomy of its own, based on the notion of supragenological types of literature, first introduced by Andrzej Zgorzelski.
The Lives of Texts
The Lives of Texts: Exploring the Metaphor examines various instances of “textual subsistence” implied by the title. Drawing on the parallel between a text and a living organism, the contributors analyze various literary texts ranging from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, as well as film adaptations and the graphic novel. Apart from the works of canonical writers, attention is also drawn to some long-forgotten authors, along with the most recent instances of popular literature and culture. The exploration of the title metaphor allows the contributors to trace life-like phenomena (e.g. textual birth, maturation, dissemination, death and resurrection) in the texts of writers so remote from each other as Layamon, Thomas More, Mary Shelley, Charles Williams, Ursula Le Guin, A. S. Byatt, Peter Ackroyd, Iain Banks, J. K. Rowling, or Neil Gaiman.
Fantasy Literature and Christianity
The debate surrounding the Christian aspects of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter has revealed not only the prominence of religious themes in fantasy fiction, but also readers' concerns over portrayals of religion in fantasy. Yet while analyses of these works fill many volumes, other fantasy series have received much less attention. This critical study explores the fantastic religions and religious themes in American and Canadian works by Stephen R. Donaldson (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), Guy Gavriel Kay (Fionavar Tapestry), Celia S. Friedman (Coldfire Trilogy), and Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn). References to biblical tradition and Christian teachings reveal these writers' overall approach to Christianity and the relationship between Christianity and the fantasy genre.
Writing the North of the North / L’Écriture du Nord du Nord / Den Norden des Nordens (be-)schreiben
The expression “North of the North” refers both to an objective, geographical reality – the territories situated at the highest latitudes on our planet – and to a subjective, mental construction which came into being many centuries ago and has been developed, modified and differentiated ever since. The chapters in the present volume examine various aspects of that concept, analysing texts and works of art from a range of regions and periods. La notion de « Nord du Nord » renvoie tout autant à la réalité géographique objective que sont les territoires des latitudes les plus élevées de notre planète qu’à une construction mentale subjective qui s’est constituée, développ...
The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic
By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and...
Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature Revisited
A unique collection of essays on selected aspects of science-fiction, fantasy and broadly understood fantastic literature, unified by a highly theoretical focus, this volume offers an overview of the most important theories pertaining to the field of the fantastic, such as Tzvetan Todorov's definition of the term itself, J.R.R. Tolkien's essay 'On Fairy Stories,' and the concept of 'Gothic space'. The composition and order of the chapters provide the reader with a systematic overview of major...
Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes exposes the limitations of the solitudes concept so often applied uncritically to the Canadian experience. This volume examines Canadian and Québécois literature of the fantastic across its genres—such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, indigenous futurism, and others—and considers how its interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, race, and gender works to bridge multiple solitudes. Utilizing a transnational lens, this volume reveals how the fantastic is ready-made for exploring, in non-literal terms, the complex and problematic nature of intercultural engagement.
Verbindungen
Verbindungen präsentiert Beiträge zur Frauenliteratur und -geschichte, zur genderkritisch wiedergelesenen (Post-)DDR-Literatur sowie zum Themenkomplex Gedächtnis und Erinnerung im ostmitteleuropäischen Raum und schlägt dabei einen weiten zeitlichen Bogen von der Lutherzeit bis in die Gegenwart. Die Autorinnen und Autoren nähern sich diesen Themen aus fachwissenschaftlich unterschiedlichen Perspektiven. Gemeinsam ist ihnen der inhaltliche Fokus auf weibliche Geschichte(n), auf kritische Selbst- und Weltentwürfe. Strukturell zeigt der Band die wissenschaftlichen, kollegialen und freundschaftlichen Verbindungen Prof. Dr. Ilse Nagelschmidts. Ihr, ihrem wissenschaftlichen Werk und ihrem gesellschaftspolitischen Engagement ist dieses Buch gewidmet.
Theoretische und fiktionale Glückskonzepte im deutschen Sprachraum (17. bis 21. Jh.)
Der deutsche Kulturraum galt lange als dem Glück eher abgeneigt. Auch der literarische Glücksdiskurs wurde als trivial und kitschig abgetan. Woher rührt und worin liegt diese deutsche Besonderheit in der Verwendung von „Glück“ als Begriff und Erfahrung im philosophischen Diskurs und in der literarischen Verarbeitung? Antworten liefern die Wechselbeziehungen literarischer und philosophischer Glücksentwürfe von der Frühen Neuzeit bis ins ausgehende 20. Jahrhundert: Vom Glück als Landidylle über Heiterkeit, Glücksskepsis und „Glück im Unglück“ bis zum Verhältnis von Glück und Erfolg werden so Wandel und Entwicklung von Glückskonzepten und -darstellungen deutlich – im Spannungsfeld von antiker Philosophie und Christentum, Immanenz und Transzendenz, Körper und Seele, individuellem Glücksstreben und kollektivem Glücksversprechen. Das Ergebnis ist ein ideengeschichtlich-literaturwissenschaftlicher Beitrag zur Emotionsgeschichte.
