Fantasy (Literature)

The phenomenon of The Lord of the Rings began to be popular in 2002, mainly for its movie version, directed by Peter Jackson. Behind the success, however; is the master of writing, J.R.R Tolkien, who wrote this epic fantasy in 1954. He created the world so monumental, that it can be compared to the epic of Homer´s Iliad and Odyssey with its own mythology and history. It is a separated universe that has its own theology, myths and geography, it is full of mystical creatures, different races, many languages and dynamical creatures. In one of his essays, On the Fairy-Stories, Tolkien stated: “From my childhood, the misery of my own lovely country had always worried me, it didn’t have any fables, not of the quality, which I saw in the legend of other countries. There were the Greek, Celtic, Roman, Finnish, Scandinavian but not the English ones.” In his later writings he extended his words: “Once I had the intention to put together a work with the connected fables, from the cosmological ones to the fairy-tale stories, which I could dedicated to England, my country.” (Tolkien according to Day 1995: 5).  We can assume that The Lord of the Rings is an integral work and it is rich for the symbols that can be interpreted from the religious perspective. In this essay I would like to focus on the character of Gandalf and how he can be viewed from the point of Christianity.

Depuis quelques décennies, la Fantasy s’est imposée comme l’un des genres majeurs de l’Imaginaire aux côtés de la Science-fiction et du Fantastique. Le Seigneur des Anneaux, Harry Potter, Narnia, Le Trône de Fer,... On ne compte plus le nombre d’oeuvres à succès relevant du genre et dont les adaptations pullulent au cinéma et à la télévision. Mais pourquoi un tel engouement pour un genre qui semble a priori éloigné des préoccupations quotidiennes avec ses récits de quête fabuleuse prenant place dans des mondes merveilleux inspirés des mythes et des contes ?

En s’appuyant sur l’analyse de quelques oeuvres représentatives, le présent ouvrage se propose d’étudier la mythopoétique de la quête mise en oeuvre par la Fantasy pour mieux mettre en évidence ce qui fait de ce genre une fiction humaniste et propre à plaire au plus grand nombre.

J.R.R. Tolkien outlines his theory of fantasy and his categorization of fantastic elements in his essay " On Fairy Stories. " Tolkien's theory of fantasy and theory of sub-creation, highlighted in the same essay, are amongst a few theories concerning fantasy literature. Considering Tolkien's theories, this paper analyses the short story " Leaf by Niggle " by J.R.R. Tolkien and tries to reveal his sub-meanings. To examine whether it properly exhibits the required elements or fails to do so, this paper will approach the story in terms of allegories and fantastic elements – fantasy, recovery, escape and consolation.

One to Rule Them All Transmedial World and the Witcher Universe

Summary: The article makes use of Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca’s  notion of transmedial world which has not been introduced to Polish humanities so far. The notion serves here to describe the characteristics of  the Witcher universe encompassing books, movies, TV series, video games trilogy, role-playing games and comics. The analysis of the Witcher’s world  is also the point of departure for a comparative study between the way the transmedial world is constructed and transmedial story as described in Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture. Additionally, it enables the author  to comment upon the narrative dynamics of fantasy worldbuilding which differs considerably from traditional mechanisms of representation.

This article demonstrates how we can gain critical insights into a fantasy world by reading its accompanying map, using Ben McSweeney's map from Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist as an example. An analysis of the map's topography, linguistic signs, and surround elements is carried out in terms of Denis Wood's proposition that all maps have authors, subjects, and themes. The results show that even without reference to the text, a map can comment on the fantasy world's technological level, its colonial history, and the central conflict of the story. Interpreting the map also invites a broader examination of the relationship between the fantastical and the actual.

This essay examines the way we can consider and discuss music of the LOTR films agains specific themes found in J.R.R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories." In effect, I demonstrate how Howard Shore's music can both reinforce and problematize Hobbits and Elves when examined from Tolkien's notions of the Primary and Secondary Worlds, i.e. our world and the "subcreated" world of fantasy.

This article is more of a think-piece, and I consider it to be in a developmental state. So it's not polished. But I'm extremely curious to know if any music, fantasy, and Tolkien scholars find the parallels I draw convincing and/or interesting. I do hope to receive some feedback!

Many thanks.

The article "Silmarillion"—J. R. R. Tolkien’s Allotopia From Ardological Perspective aims at outlining the methodology for studying Tolkien’s world-building project without the need of acknowledging the text-centered reading paradigm. Having differentiated tolkienology, as text-focused, philological studies, from ardology, understood as world-building studies, Maj deconstructs the use of Tolkienian’s “subcreation” in literary theory as far too indebted in the metaphysics of presence to establish a neutral framework for studying the process of constructing a fictional reality. With the examples from "Silmarillion"—perhaps the best instance of modern mythography, in no way resembling the narrative arc of a prototypical fantasy novel—the author builds up on the notion of “allotopia” as the world independent insofar to create its own ontologies, topographies, languages, philosophy, history, literature, art, or even physical artifacts—without the need of anchoring the overall creation in a metaphysical paradigm. Correspondingly, the text offers an insight to a number of theories in postclassical narratology or postmodern philosophy that may help in understanding the scale of Tolkien’s solemn contribution to the art of fantastic world-building.

This article analyzes the nature of urban fantasy by aggregating the claims, suggestions, and observations made by several different accounts of what urban fantasy is. These accounts comprise six scholarly sources and four sources written by people who are producers and purveyors of urban fantasy. An eleventh "account" is made up of the impressions conveyed by a vast number of book covers identified through Google Image Search. These eleven accounts are analyzed with regard to their views on worlds and settings, cities and urbanity, central characters, and the sources of fantastic elements. Finally, the article presents how three major threads in the accounts reveal that urban fantasy has a central, thematic concern with the Unseen. This Unseen is largely related to a social Other that portrays unpleasant aspects of urban life, such as criminality, homelessness, addiction, prostitution, and physical and sexual abuse.

Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

This article explores the spacial realm of the child predator in the children’s novel, The Thief of Always (1992). Informed by social discourse, the environment of the predator reveals not only the arrested psyche of the predator, but also the popular understanding of the techniques used to manipulate and retain children in his realm. Thief is a portal-quest fantasy, and the portal into the fantasy realm of the predator reveals much in terms of the type of child desired by the predator and the agency of the child. Via the entrance, the child gains privileged access to the realm of the predator, wherein a reversal of power allows for the child to experience a false autonomy and have his every desire fulfilled. Boredom and childhood innocence play a key role in the victimization of the child, while social discourses about the child and the child predator inform both representations in this narrative. The exclusion of the predator’s realm from the rest of narrative reality is significant in that it creates a distinction between the predator and normative society, allowing for his exclusion while also facilitating his abduction and retention of children.

This survey paper examines the evolving trends in contemporary Pakistani speculative fiction which brings together tropes and motifs from imaginative worlds of local folklores as well as Islamic mythical worlds of South Asian civilization. We particularly discuss the ways in which, by adapting extra-terrestrial life forms, mythological tropes and themes from the Urdu popular genre tradition, Pakistani anglophone writers bring to the fore the greater potential of the speculative genre in responding to more contemporary problems associated with patriarchy, fundamentalism, gender issues, neo-colonialism, marginalization, racism, war technology and anxieties associated with emergent forms of nationalism. This paper specifically engages with Pakistani anglophone speculative fiction which is explicitly in conversation with Urdu science fiction and fantasy tradition, and in so doing these works create new worlds of indigenous cultures as vibrant and resistant yet firmly fixed in both myth and alternate futures. Our survey of a long-standing fascination of Pakistani anglophone writers with some local tropes that refigure in their speculative fiction shows how these non-western speculative paradigms can serve to re-centre and revive Pakistani speculative tradition in the global popular culture.

I examine the use of organic, cyclic metaphors in Lord of the Rings and show how they are consonant with Spenglerian themes of cultural growth and civilizational decay that were prevalent in the twentieth century. I compare Spengler’s description of the West as the “evening lands” to Tolkien’s description of Gondor and the West in his novel as a “Twilight” or failing civilisation, succumbing to depopulation and lacking the cultural vitality it once had and I note some striking similarities between Spengler's metaphors and Tolkien's  imagery in The Lord of the Rings.

Książka "Narracje fantastyczne" pod wspólną redakcją Kseni Olkusz i Krzysztofa M. Ma­ja jest piątym tomem serii „Perspektywy Ponowoczesności”, zbierającym na blis­ko siedmiuset stronach trzydzieści tekstów nau­kowych rozpatrujących szeroko po­jętą fantastykę z perspektywy ponowoczesnej, trans­dyscyplinarnej i światocentrycz­nej zarazem *** Z recenzji prof. dr hab. Anny Łebkowskiej (Uniwersytet Jagielloński):
Tom "Narracje fantastyczne" to zbiór studiów poświęconych ważnym współczesnym zjawiskom obecnym w literaturze, filmie, grach komputerowych i szeroko rozumianym świecie kultury. Wśród jego wielu zalet wymienić należy na pierwszym miejscu opracowanie mocnych podstaw teore­tycznych. Autorzy podważają paradygmat tekstocentryczny i opisują zjawisko zwrotu światocen­trycznego, przekonująco je udokumentowując. Przedstawione w tomie studia pozwalają nie tylko usytuować współczesne narracje fantastyczne na tle przemian światopoglą­dowych, teorii filozofi­cznych i kulturowych, ale zarazem ukazać ich wyraźne powiązania z namy­słem nad ponowocze­snością. Książka zaleca się także – między innymi – ważnymi głosami na te­mat sporów wokół współczesnego kanonu fantastyki, rozważaniami poświęconymi figurze cybor­ga w świetle teorii posthumanistycznych czy zagadnieniu transfikcjonalności. Zgodnie z przyjętą ramą światocen­tryczną w osobnej części tomu znajdziemy studia na temat przestrzeni: głównie miasta i społe­czeństwa, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem problemu utopii, a także rozprawy, któ­rych autorzy skoncentrowali się na kwestiach temporalnych (tu m.in. historie alternatywne). Roz­ległe spektrum badanych problemów dopełnione zostało przez – poparte gruntownymi analizami – interpretacje zjawisk obecnych w wielu mediach. Należy z całym przekonaniem stwierdzić, że tom oddawany do rąk czytelnika stanowi cenną inicjatywę badawczą.

Neil Gaiman is a renowned British author of fantasy, science fiction novels, children's books and short stories. In Gaiman's works, time and space are major elements, playing a key-role in his narratives. " The intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature " was termed as chronotope by Bakhtin. The chronotope is an important literary element, having narrative, plot-generating, representational, and semantic significance, and providing the basis for distinguishing generic types (Bemong, Borghart 2010). However, the chronotope in fantasy fiction is a rather complex notion. Due to its magic and supernatural elements, fantastic literature employs multiple chronotopes, making a step from a single chronotope of reality (or rather of its representation) to those of alternate worlds or realms. This article aims to examine Gaiman's novels from a spatio-temporal point of view and to analyze the importance of space and time in " Stardust " , " Neverwhere " , and " American Gods " , by using Bakhtin's concept of chronotope, and Foucault's concepts of heterotopia and heterochronia.

This petition argues that erotic comics are an important cultural record of the way in which diverse sexualities are understood and portrayed, and sexual fantasies explored. An Erotic Comics Anglophone Archive (ErotiCAA) will preserve these works for research by scholars in many different disciplines.

One of the biggest problems facing anyone researching pornography/erotica or comics, and therefore doubly so for anyone researching erotic/pornographic comics, is finding and gaining access to primary materials. So we have decided to have a go at establishing an archive in the UK to collect and catalogue English-language porn and erotic comics.

We intend to approach a number of libraries and research institutions to host and/or fund the archive. Persuading them to support us will be a lot easier if we an show that there is a need for this archive, so to help with that we’ve started this petition.

We’ve already got this kick-ass logo designed for us by Alison Lucy Stone and meetings set up with a couple of big libraries. Help us out by signing the petition? And if you’d like to be more involved, please tweet Dr Anna Madill @UKFujoshi or Dr Jude Roberts @tangendentalism - we’d love to hear from you!

This paper is aimed to analyse time and space as the prominent themes of modern Arabic science fictionon the example of the novel “Voyage to Tomorrow” by Tawfiqal-Hakim. In this research a combination of two research methods - documentary analysis and literature review - was used. Documentary analysis involves obtaining data from about ten scientific articles  and  theses.  Documentary  analysis  was  used  to  obtain  general  data  about  the  subject  of  the  research.  Results  of  the research make it obvious that time travel is one ofthe most contagious ideas in science fiction.  In  modern society where time is a unit of value and instant gratification is prized, the idea of traveling through time appears more than ever in books, movies, and pop culture. Arabic science fiction writers try to incorporate the latest theories about the nature of the universe to give their stories greater realism. A pioneering figure of modern Arabic science fiction, Tawfiq al-Hakim, is thefocus of attention in the paper because of his evolutionary and panoramic view of history and time in his novel “Voyage to Tomorrow”. Qualitative methods, documentary and literary analyses used in the research allowed the author to come to the conclusion that the ideas of the novel approach nature as transformational, rather than static and unchanging, and time as directional, rather than cyclic. The paper also shows how different traditions were combined in the “Voyage to Tomorrow” reflecting peculiarities of modern Arabic science fiction.

The objective of the present text is to kindle a debate regarding the relations between image and text in children‘s literature in general, and in the The Wednesday Tales trilogy, by the Irish writer and illustrator Jon Berkeley, in specific. It is also an objective to offer introductory-level materials for the beginning of a discussion that seeks to contribute to the Brazilian literary-critical output concerning contemporary foreign literatures, to the field of Literary Studies and to literary historiography.

In recent years, many of George MacDonald’s narrative, poetic, critical and theological works have been made available in digital formats — which has opened up new possibilities for investigating these works. The aim of the present paper is to explore some of the new possibilities by approaching George MacDonald’s literary works using a quantitative method of stylistic research that has recently been termed “corpus stylistics”.

Tolkien asserts that fantasy does not ignore scientific reality but enables us to understand the empirical reality better. The prophecies in The Lord of the Rings, like fantasy, can only be understood through sharp and clear reasoning. Although prophecies, reflecting only a part of what will happen, may sometimes be disorientating or even misleading with their half-truth, they prove useful to those with the imagination to consider all the possibilities alongside the reason and foresight to perceive accurately and evaluate the realities that are hidden in prophecies. The knowledge that prophecies provide may bring with itself power, success and liberty; however, it is not possible for the prophecies to reflect the future in its entire reality because the reality that prophecies represent is devoid of completeness and reflects the future only partially. The Mirror of Galadriel, the palantir, the old prophecies, the dream of Faramir and Boromir and the small signs such as the elf-stone beryl, despite destroying the wholeness of the reality by delineating it partially, enable those who interpret them accurately by employing their reason to perceive better.
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Tolkien fantastiğin, bilimsel gerçekliği görmezden gelmediğini, aksine ampirik gerçeği daha iyi anlamanın bir yolu olduğunu savunur. Tıpki fantastik gibi, Yüzüklerin Efendisi’ndeki kehanetler de ancak keskin ve net bir mantıkla doğru anlaşılabilir. Kehanetler, gelecekte olacakların yalnızca bir kısmını yansıtarak, yarı gerçeklikleriyle zaman zaman şaşırtıcı ve hatta yanlış yönlendirici olabilseler dahi kehanetlerin gizli tuttuğu gerçekleri göz önünde bulunduracak ve onları doğru algılayacak mantık ve öngörünün yanısıra tüm olasılıkları değerlendirebilecek hayal gücüne sahip olanların işine yararlar. Kehanetlerin verdiği bilgi, beraberinde güç, başarı ve özgürlük getirebilir fakat sundukları gerçeklik bütünlükten yoksun olup geleceğin yalnızca küçük bir kesitini gösterdiği için geleceği tüm gerçekliğiyle yansıtmaları mümkün değildir. Galadriel’in Aynası, palantírler, eski kehanetler, Faramir ve Boromir’in rüyası ve beril taşı gibi küçük işaretler gerçeğin yalnızca bir bölümünü göstererek gerçeğin bütünlüğünü bozsalar dahi mantığını kullanarak onları doğru yorumlayanların gerçekleri daha iyi anlamalarını sağlarlar.

[Prorogata al 30 aprile 2022 la scadenza]
Call for papers del seminario “All’Ombra di Innsmouth. Religioni e Miti nell’Opera di Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (Ariccia, 7-9 luglio 2022). Terzo seminario sulle “Religioni Fantastiche” promosso dal Museo delle Religioni “Raffaele Pettazzoni”.

Gli studiosi interessati a presentare un contributo possono inviare un abstract di non più di una pagina (max 2.000 battute) al direttore del Museo delle Religioni, Igor Baglioni, entro e non oltre il giorno 30 aprile 2022, al seguente indirizzo di posta elettronica: igorbaglioni79@gmail.com
All’abstract dovranno essere allegati: il titolo del paper; una breve nota biografica; un recapito di posta elettronica; un recapito telefonico.
Le relazioni andranno presentate in italiano.
L’accettazione o meno della proposta di relazione verrà comunicata via posta elettronica entro il 10 maggio 2022.

Date da ricordare:
Chiusura call for papers: 30 aprile 2022.
Convegno: 7-9 luglio 2022.

Recenzja książki "Geografia krain zmyślonych. Wokół kategorii miejsca i przestrzeni w literaturze dziecięcej, młodzieżowej i fantastycznej", red. Weronika Kostecka, Maciej Skowera, Warszawa 2016.

Cytowanie: Krzysztof M. Maj, Fantastyczna geopoetyka, "Creatio Fantastica" 2017, nr 1 (56), ss. 127-116

Towards the end of 1927 – following the publication of To the Lighthouse in May – Virginia Woolf took what she described as a ‘writer’s holiday’. Not that this meant a holiday from writing; rather it was a break from the intensity of her ongoing Modernist experiment. ‘For the truth is,’ she noted in her diary, ‘I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books whose form is always so closely considered.’ Instead, ‘I want to kick up my heels & be off.’ Then 45, with five increasingly complex and beautiful novels behind her, a couple of dozen short stories and two collections of essays, she was working on a book on ‘Fiction, or some such title to that effect’ and it was not going well. At her lowest ebb, bored and demoralised by literary criticism, inspiration suddenly and unexpectedly struck. As she promptly wrote to her friend Vita Sackville-West:

Yesterday morning I was in despair. I couldn’t screw a word from me; and at last I dropped my head in my hands: dipped my pen in the ink and, and wrote these words, as if automatically, on a clean sheet: Orlando: A Biography. No sooner had I done this than my body was flooded with rapture and my brain with ideas. I wrote rapidly until 12.

‘But listen,’ she concluded, ‘suppose Orlando turns out to be Vita…’ There was, however, no ‘suppose’ about it. Orlando, like Sackville-West herself – ‘Vita’ literally meaning ‘Life’ – was a force of nature: ‘How extraordinarily unwilled by me but potent in its own right,’ Woolf wrote of the project in her diary, ‘as if it had shoved everything aside to come into existence.’ But then, love’s always like that, isn’t it?