Author : Farah Mendlesohn
Publisher : Libri Publishing Limited
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 48,69 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN :
A history of the fantasy form, this work traces the genre from the earliest years with The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey through to the origins of modern fantasy in the 20th century with such acclaimed writers as Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling. An exploration of the great variety of fiction published under the heading "fantasy,” this engaging study seeks to explain its continuing and ever growing popularity.
Author : Edward James
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 45,57 MB
Release : 2012-01-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1107493730
Fantasy is a creation of the Enlightenment, and the recognition that excitement and wonder can be found in imagining impossible things. From the ghost stories of the Gothic to the zombies and vampires of twenty-first-century popular literature, from Mrs Radcliffe to Ms Rowling, the fantastic has been popular with readers. Since Tolkien and his many imitators, however, it has become a major publishing phenomenon. In this volume, critics and authors of fantasy look at its history since the Enlightenment, introduce readers to some of the different codes for the reading and understanding of fantasy, and examine some of the many varieties and subgenres of fantasy; from magical realism at the more literary end of the genre, to paranormal romance at the more popular end. The book is edited by the same pair who produced The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (winner of a Hugo Award in 2005).
Author : Peter S. Beagle
Publisher : Tachyon Publications
Page : 379 pages
File Size : 37,90 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781892391995
Tired of the same old fantasy? Here are nineteen much-needed antidotes to clichâed tales of swords and sorcery. Fantasy is back, and it's better than ever!
Author : Farah Mendlesohn
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 23,91 MB
Release : 2014-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0819573914
This sweeping study of fantasy literature offers “new and often surprising readings of works both familiar and obscure. A fine critical work” (Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts). Transcending arguments over the definition of fantasy literature, Rhetorics of Fantasy introduces a provocative new system of classification for the genre. Drawing on nearly two hundred examples of modern fantasy, author Farah Mendlesohn identifies four categories—portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and liminal—that arise out of the relationship of the protagonist to the fantasy world. Using these sets, Mendlesohn argues that the author's stylistic decisions are then shaped by the inescapably political demands of the category in which they choose to write. Each chapter covers at least twenty books in detail, ranging from nineteenth-century fantasy and horror to some of the best works in the contemporary field. Mendlesohn discusses works by more than one hundred authors, including Lloyd Alexander, Peter Beagle, Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Crowley, Stephen R. Donaldson, Stephen King, C. S. Lewis, Gregory Maguire, Robin McKinley, China Miéville, Suniti Namjoshi, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Sheri S. Tepper, J. R. R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, and many others.
Author : Jorge Luis Borges
Publisher :
Page : 526 pages
File Size : 29,67 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Fantasy fiction
ISBN : 9780552994019
Author : Farah Mendlesohn
Publisher : Libri Publishing Limited
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 24,67 MB
Release : 2012-06-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1907471642
Some of the earliest books ever written, including The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, deal with monsters, marvels, extraordinary voyages, and magic, and this genre, known as fantasy, remained an essential part of European literature through the rise of the modern realist novel. Tracing the history of fantasy from the earliest years through to the origins of modern fantasy in the 20th century, this account discusses contributions decade by decade--from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lewis's Narnia books in the 1950s to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. It also discusses and explains fantasy's continuing and growing popularity.
Author : Brian Stableford
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 568 pages
File Size : 12,54 MB
Release : 2009-08-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0810863456
Once upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic existed, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in Western estimation by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was temporarily marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace. Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks the evolution of fantasy from the origins of literature to the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulses creating and shaping fantasy literature, the problems of its definition and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 other entries describe the fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography that ranges from general textbooks and specialized accounts of the history and scholarship of fantasy literature, through bibliographies and accounts of the fantasy literature of different nations, to individual author studies and useful websites.
Author : Jeff Shear
Publisher : Doubleday Books
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 24,61 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :
The story of the giving away of American aerospace technology to Japan.
Author :
Publisher : Capstone
Page : 70 pages
File Size : 25,55 MB
Release : 2006-01-01
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9780756516390
Explains how to create fantasy fiction, from crafting believable characters to creating intense plots, with examples from successful fantasy books.
Author : Jo Walton
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 50,58 MB
Release : 2014-01-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1466844094
“A remarkable guided tour through the field—a kind of nonfiction companion to Among Others. It’s very good. It’s great.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing As any reader of Jo Walton’s Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field’s most ambitious series. Among Walton’s many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by “mainstream”; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field’s many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. “For readers unschooled in the history of SF/F, this book is a treasure trove.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
