Matthew Sangster – författare

'Fantasy, we know, from the oldest stories in the oldest languages, has always been with us.' - Neil Gaiman, 'Preface'Fantasy is an expansive genre, encompassing sprawling epics, ancient folklore, impossible worlds and forays into the dark and horrifying. In this new volume, twenty authors have mustered for a journey across four vast realms: Fairy and Folk Tales, Epics and Quests, the Weird and Uncanny, and Portals and Worlds. Prepare to delve into the heart of Fantasy, with explorations of the art of world-building, the undying appeal of the quest narrative, the diversity and interconnectedness of the world's fairy stories and weird tales, and the unique power of the uncanny in videogames. Here, you will find contributions from a host of writers including Maria Dahvana Headley, China Mieville, Sofia Samatar, Marina Warner and Terri Windling, alongside sage insights from expert British Library curators and Fantasy literature specialists.Featuring awe-inspiring illustrations and representing the gamut of fantastic creativity from Gilgamesh to Ursula K. Le Guin, from Beowulf to the Brontes, and from The Dark Crystal to the Dark Souls franchise, Realms of Imagination is a treasure trove of new perspectives and fresh discoveries.

Providing an engaging and accessible introduction to the Fantasy genre in literature, media and culture, this incisive volume explores why Fantasy matters in the context of its unique affordances, its disparate pasts and its extraordinary current flourishing. It pays especial attention to Fantasy's engagements with histories and traditions, its manifestations across media and its dynamic communities. Matthew Sangster covers works ancient and modern; well-known and obscure; and ranging in scale from brief poems and stories to sprawling transmedia franchises. Chapters explore the roles Fantasy plays in negotiating the beliefs we live by; the iterative processes through which fantasies build, develop and question; the root traditions that inform and underpin modern Fantasy; how Fantasy interrogates the preconceptions of realism and Enlightenment totalisations; the practices, politics and aesthetics of world-building; and the importance of Fantasy communities for maintaining the field as a diverse and ever-changing commons.

Providing an engaging and accessible introduction to the Fantasy genre in literature, media and culture, this incisive volume explores why Fantasy matters in the context of its unique affordances, its disparate pasts and its extraordinary current flourishing. It pays especial attention to Fantasy's engagements with histories and traditions, its manifestations across media and its dynamic communities. Matthew Sangster covers works ancient and modern; well-known and obscure; and ranging in scale from brief poems and stories to sprawling transmedia franchises. Chapters explore the roles Fantasy plays in negotiating the beliefs we live by; the iterative processes through which fantasies build, develop and question; the root traditions that inform and underpin modern Fantasy; how Fantasy interrogates the preconceptions of realism and Enlightenment totalisations; the practices, politics and aesthetics of world-building; and the importance of Fantasy communities for maintaining the field as a diverse and ever-changing commons.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700-1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection's primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700-1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection's primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700–1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection''s primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

This collection provides students and researchers with a new and lively understanding of the role of institutions in the production, reception, and meaning of literature in the period 1700–1900. The period saw a fundamental transition from a patronage system to a marketplace in which institutions played an important mediating role between writers and readers, a shift with consequences that continue to resonate today. Often producers themselves, institutions processed and claimed authority over a variety of cultural domains that never simply tessellated into any unified system. The collection''s primary concerns are British and imperial environments, with a comparative German case study, but it offers encouragement for its approaches to be taken up in a variety of other cultural contexts. From the Post Office to museums, from bricks and mortar to less tangible institutions like authorship and genre, this collection opens up a new field for literary studies.

Fantasy literature inhabits the realms of the orthodox and heterodox, the divine and demonic simultaneously, making it uniquely positioned to imaginatively re-envision Christian theology from a position of difference. Having an affinity for the monstrous and the ‘other’, and a preoccupation with desires and forms of embodiment that subvert dominant understandings of reality, fantasy texts hold hitherto unexplored potential for articulating queer and feminist religious perspectives.Focusing primarily on fantastic literature of the mid- to late twentieth century, this book examines how Christian theology in the genre is dismantled, re-imagined and transformed from the margins of gender and sexuality. Aligning fantasy with Derrida’s theories of deconstruction, Taylor Driggers explores how the genre can re-figure God as the ‘other’ excluded and erased from theology. Through careful readings of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea novels, Driggers contends that fantasy can challenge cis-normative, heterosexual, and patriarchal theology. Also engaging with the theories of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and Linn Marie Tonstad, this book demonstrates that whilst fantasy cannot save Christianity from itself, nor rehabilitate it for marginalised subjects, it confronts theology with its silenced others in a way that bypasses institutional debates on inclusion and leadership, asking how theology might be imagined otherwise.

Fantasy literature inhabits the realms of the orthodox and heterodox, the divine and demonic simultaneously, making it uniquely positioned to imaginatively re-envision Christian theology from a position of difference. Having an affinity for the monstrous and the ‘other’, and a preoccupation with desires and forms of embodiment that subvert dominant understandings of reality, fantasy texts hold hitherto unexplored potential for articulating queer and feminist religious perspectives.Focusing primarily on fantastic literature of the mid- to late twentieth century, this book examines how Christian theology in the genre is dismantled, re-imagined and transformed from the margins of gender and sexuality. Aligning fantasy with Derrida’s theories of deconstruction, Taylor Driggers explores how the genre can re-figure God as the ‘other’ excluded and erased from theology. Through careful readings of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea novels, Driggers contends that fantasy can challenge cis-normative, heterosexual, and patriarchal theology. Also engaging with the theories of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and Linn Marie Tonstad, this book demonstrates that whilst fantasy cannot save Christianity from itself, nor rehabilitate it for marginalised subjects, it confronts theology with its silenced others in a way that bypasses institutional debates on inclusion and leadership, asking how theology might be imagined otherwise.

In this cutting-edge study of Tolkien’s most critically neglected maps, Anahit Behrooz examines how cartography has traditionally been bound up in facilitating power. Far more than just illustrations to aid understanding of the story, Tolkien’s corpus of maps are crucial to understanding the broader narratives between humans and their political and environmental landscapes within his legendarium. Undertaking a diegetic literary analysis of the maps as examples of Middle-earth’s own cultural output, Behrooz reveals a sub-created tradition of cartography that articulates specific power dynamics between mapmaker, map reader, and what is being mapped, as well as the human/nonhuman binary that represents human’s control over the natural world.Mapping Middle-earth surveys how Tolkien frames cartography as an inherently political act that embodies a desire for control of that which it maps. In turn, it analyses harmful contemporary engagements with land that intersect with, but also move beyond, cartography such as environmental damage; human-induced geological change; and the natural and bodily costs of political violence and imperialism. Using historical, eco-critical, and postcolonial frameworks, and such theorists as Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway and Edward Said, this book explores Tolkien’s employment of particular generic tropes including medievalism, fantasy, and the interplay between image and text to highlight, and at times correct, his contemporary socio-political epoch and its destructive relationship with the wider world.

In this cutting-edge study of Tolkien’s most critically neglected maps, Anahit Behrooz examines how cartography has traditionally been bound up in facilitating power. Far more than just illustrations to aid understanding of the story, Tolkien’s corpus of maps are crucial to understanding the broader narratives between humans and their political and environmental landscapes within his legendarium. Undertaking a diegetic literary analysis of the maps as examples of Middle-earth’s own cultural output, Behrooz reveals a sub-created tradition of cartography that articulates specific power dynamics between mapmaker, map reader, and what is being mapped, as well as the human/nonhuman binary that represents human’s control over the natural world.Mapping Middle-earth surveys how Tolkien frames cartography as an inherently political act that embodies a desire for control of that which it maps. In turn, it analyses harmful contemporary engagements with land that intersect with, but also move beyond, cartography such as environmental damage; human-induced geological change; and the natural and bodily costs of political violence and imperialism. Using historical, eco-critical, and postcolonial frameworks, and such theorists as Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway and Edward Said, this book explores Tolkien’s employment of particular generic tropes including medievalism, fantasy, and the interplay between image and text to highlight, and at times correct, his contemporary socio-political epoch and its destructive relationship with the wider world.

Exploring a range of international works such as films, streaming television series, a graphic novel, and a picture book, this open access book interrogates how, and to what extent, fairy tales are put to work for justice in the areas of environment and ecology, kinship and family, ability and disability, and sex and gender. As Bacchilega and Greenhill demonstrate, some 21st-century fairy tales channel the genre’s wonder to offer otherwise possibilities for being and acting in the world that are not confined to socially sanctioned paths. Drawing on visual and audio-visual case studies of texts such as The Magic Fish, Julián Is A Mermaid, Pokot [Spoor], Gräns [Border], The Dragon Prince, Gatta Cenerentola [Cinderella the Cat], and Sweet Tooth, they examine how the wonder and preternatural of fairy tales model a sustained desire to believe in and realize new ways of existence that have often been too easily dismissed. Guided by theories in fields including ecological, gender, disability, critical race, Indigenous, fantasy, posthuman, and adaptation studies as they intersect with folklore and fairy tale studies, this book examines how creators of wonder tales since the beginning of the new millenium have presented provocations around humans’ political and social relations with nature and culture. Analyzing justice from a variety of positions and establishing how tales of the otherwise can develop optative thinking, Justice in 21st-Century Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder refutes the conservative, patriarchal, and merely nostalgic Disnified narrative of the genre and insists on the power of wonder within and beyond fairy tales.The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 435-2019-0691 and The University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Exploring a range of international works such as films, streaming television series, a graphic novel, and a picture book, this open access book interrogates how, and to what extent, fairy tales are put to work for justice in the areas of environment and ecology, kinship and family, ability and disability, and sex and gender. As Bacchilega and Greenhill demonstrate, some 21st-century fairy tales channel the genre’s wonder to offer otherwise possibilities for being and acting in the world that are not confined to socially sanctioned paths. Drawing on visual and audio-visual case studies of texts such as The Magic Fish, Julián Is A Mermaid, Pokot [Spoor], Gräns [Border], The Dragon Prince, Gatta Cenerentola [Cinderella the Cat], and Sweet Tooth, they examine how the wonder and preternatural of fairy tales model a sustained desire to believe in and realize new ways of existence that have often been too easily dismissed. Guided by theories in fields including ecological, gender, disability, critical race, Indigenous, fantasy, posthuman, and adaptation studies as they intersect with folklore and fairy tale studies, this book examines how creators of wonder tales since the beginning of the new millenium have presented provocations around humans’ political and social relations with nature and culture. Analyzing justice from a variety of positions and establishing how tales of the otherwise can develop optative thinking, Justice in 21st-Century Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder refutes the conservative, patriarchal, and merely nostalgic Disnified narrative of the genre and insists on the power of wonder within and beyond fairy tales.The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 435-2019-0691 and The University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Exploring the phenomenon of Femslash fanfiction (fan narratives that bring together heterosexual female characters from mainstream media and fiction), this book analyses fan-authored works as forms of literature worthy of studying at length. It examines the anti-racist, feminist, sapphic fan works produced in response to white supremacist, heteronormative, queerbaiting mainstream fantasy and argues that they represent a significant site of queer healing for marginalised audience members.Focusing on the 'Swan Queen' fandom, where fans pair the ‘white trash’ heroine, Emma Swan and the villainous Latina Evil Queen (Regina Mills) from ABC's hit show Once Upon a Time, Alice Kelly redresses the widespread academic neglect of queer female fandoms and responds to urgent calls to diversify fan and fantasy scholarship. With reference to complex theoretical subjects such as ethnography, sociology, psychology and decolonial, queer, film and media studies, the book also delves into the alternative timescales on which queer female and genderqueer fan authorship runs; offers intriguing insights into fanfiction narrative structures; and tackles the issues of broader fandom representation and contextualization.Making the case that fan texts deserve attention in the academy, Kelly shows how some of the most prolific fan works have the ability to enact colour reparation and a reclamation of memory, fantasy, romance, maternity, childhood, parenting and magic. These fictions serve fan communities as a whole through intersectional challenges to the power dynamics of the source text and within the fandom itself and, as the book demonstrates, offer attendant validation to fantasy fans who have been repeatedly told that the genre is not for them.

Exploring the phenomenon of Femslash fanfiction (fan narratives that bring together heterosexual female characters from mainstream media and fiction), this book analyses fan-authored works as forms of literature worthy of studying at length. It examines the anti-racist, feminist, sapphic fan works produced in response to white supremacist, heteronormative, queerbaiting mainstream fantasy and argues that they represent a significant site of queer healing for marginalised audience members.Focusing on the 'Swan Queen' fandom, where fans pair the ‘white trash’ heroine, Emma Swan and the villainous Latina Evil Queen (Regina Mills) from ABC's hit show Once Upon a Time, Alice Kelly redresses the widespread academic neglect of queer female fandoms and responds to urgent calls to diversify fan and fantasy scholarship. With reference to complex theoretical subjects such as ethnography, sociology, psychology and decolonial, queer, film and media studies, the book also delves into the alternative timescales on which queer female and genderqueer fan authorship runs; offers intriguing insights into fanfiction narrative structures; and tackles the issues of broader fandom representation and contextualization.Making the case that fan texts deserve attention in the academy, Kelly shows how some of the most prolific fan works have the ability to enact colour reparation and a reclamation of memory, fantasy, romance, maternity, childhood, parenting and magic. These fictions serve fan communities as a whole through intersectional challenges to the power dynamics of the source text and within the fandom itself and, as the book demonstrates, offer attendant validation to fantasy fans who have been repeatedly told that the genre is not for them.

The first comprehensive study of the works of William Hope Hodgson, one of the true innovators of Weird fiction, this book examines the Weird novels and stories upon which his posthumous reputation rests, his non-fantastic writing, identifiable literary influences, and the historical contexts in which he wrote. Focusing extensively upon major works such as The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), Timothy S. Murphy surveys topics including Hodgson’s experiments with code switching and linguistic experimentation; his depictions of racial and ethnic differences and gender and sexuality; the function of space and place in his writing; the adaptation of his shipboard experiences; and his use of abyssal time. With special attention paid to his paradoxical nihilist humanism, this book explores what made Hodgson a respected precursor to later innovators such as H. P. Lovecraft and C.L. Moore, and what makes him an important ancestor to 21st-century writers such as China Miéville, Greg Bear, and Charlie Jane Anders.Demonstrating how his work is both of his time and ‘untimely’, Murphy recovers Hodgson as the most significant figure to precede the fantastically popular but deeply controversial Lovecraft, as well as a figure whose work challenges what has thus far been accepted about the genre and the interpretive perspectives from which we view it.

The first comprehensive study of the works of William Hope Hodgson, one of the true innovators of Weird fiction, this book examines the Weird novels and stories upon which his posthumous reputation rests, his non-fantastic writing, identifiable literary influences, and the historical contexts in which he wrote. Focusing extensively upon major works such as The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), Timothy S. Murphy surveys topics including Hodgson’s experiments with code switching and linguistic experimentation; his depictions of racial and ethnic differences and gender and sexuality; the function of space and place in his writing; the adaptation of his shipboard experiences; and his use of abyssal time. With special attention paid to his paradoxical nihilist humanism, this book explores what made Hodgson a respected precursor to later innovators such as H. P. Lovecraft and C.L. Moore, and what makes him an important ancestor to 21st-century writers such as China Miéville, Greg Bear, and Charlie Jane Anders.Demonstrating how his work is both of his time and ‘untimely’, Murphy recovers Hodgson as the most significant figure to precede the fantastically popular but deeply controversial Lovecraft, as well as a figure whose work challenges what has thus far been accepted about the genre and the interpretive perspectives from which we view it.

Approaching translations of Tolkien's works as stories in their own right, this book reads multiple Chinese translations of Tolkien's writing to uncover the new and unique perspectives that enrich the meaning of the original texts. Exploring translations of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin and The Unfinished Tales, Eric Reinders reveals the mechanics of meaning by literally back-translating the Chinese into English to dig into the conceptual common grounds shared by religion, fantasy and translation, namely the suspension of disbelief, and questions of truth - literal, allegorical and existential. With coverage of themes such as gods and heathens, elves and 'Men', race, mortality and immortality, fate and doom, and language, Reinder's journey to Chinese Middle-earth and back again drastically alters views on Tolkien's work where even basic genre classification surrounding fantasy literature look different through the lens of Chinese literary expectations.Invoking scholarship in Tolkien studies, fantasy theory and religious and translations studies, this is an ambitious exercises in comparative imagination across cultures that suspends the prejudiced hierarchy of originals over translations.

Approaching translations of Tolkien's works as stories in their own right, this book reads multiple Chinese translations of Tolkien's writing to uncover the new and unique perspectives that enrich the meaning of the original texts. Exploring translations of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin and The Unfinished Tales, Eric Reinders reveals the mechanics of meaning by literally back-translating the Chinese into English to dig into the conceptual common grounds shared by religion, fantasy and translation, namely the suspension of disbelief, and questions of truth - literal, allegorical and existential. With coverage of themes such as gods and heathens, elves and 'Men', race, mortality and immortality, fate and doom, and language, Reinder's journey to Chinese Middle-earth and back again drastically alters views on Tolkien's work where even basic genre classification surrounding fantasy literature look different through the lens of Chinese literary expectations.Invoking scholarship in Tolkien studies, fantasy theory and religious and translations studies, this is an ambitious exercises in comparative imagination across cultures that suspends the prejudiced hierarchy of originals over translations.

Focusing on a corpus of fantasy texts written in colonial India during the late 19th and early 20th century, this book explores the origins, motivations, nature, and role of fantasy and speculative writing during a period of tremendous social and political churning.Taking stock of Bengali texts often marginalized as children’s literature or deemed unworthy of serious critical attention, Mayurika Chakravorty examines the works of authors such as Sanjibchandra Chattopadhyay, Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay, Parashuram (Rajshekhar Basu), Abanindranath Tagore, and Sukumar Ray to shed light on how their writing offered stringent commentaries on the colonial situation whilst grappling with larger questions around science, progress, environment, social hierarchies, ethics, and morality.With a focus on how key authors and their works—largely omitted from the established canon—were influenced by diverse cultural streams from European, Persian, classical Sanskrit, and local folk traditions, Fantasy and the Politics of Subversion explores how these texts challenged dominant tropes and conventions while subverting authority, both literary and political.In highlighting overlooked writing within Indian literary history, fantasy and children’s literature studies, Chakravorty demonstrates that, in understanding these works in relation to one another, they provide evidence of compelling bodies of work produced in the context of, and in resistance to, the empire.

A comprehensive history and analysis of the Soviet illustrated editions of The Lord of the Rings published between 1981 and 1993, this book explores the production and reception of these works against a backdrop of oppressive state censorship, restrictive publishing practices and logistical struggles of translating such long texts. Highlighting the intense creativity, innovation and resourcefulness of illustrators from the USSR, Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc demonstrates how new forms of Tolkienian imagery reforged Western fantasy artwork and brought fresh iconographical diversity to late 20th-century fantasy visuals. In employing comparative analysis to reconcile the neglected Soviet illustrations with their popular Western equivalents, the book situates both pictorial traditions within the wider cultural and political contexts of the period and reflects upon their relevance to current debates regarding visual heterogeneity in fantasy.Carefully reconstructing the diverse Middle-earth visions of illustrators such as Gyozo Vida, Jerzy Czerniawski, Yassen Panov, Alexander Korotich, Èduard Zarjanskij, Denis Gordeev and Sergei Iukhimov, Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc broadens notions of how Tolkien's work was received beyond Anglo-centric, Western audiences. A vivid record of artistic reception and the permeability of cultural boundaries during the final years of Communist rule, author Joel Merriner offers an art historian's analysis of these illustrations of Tolkien's beloved work and sheds new light on the role of visual art in shaping cultural content.

A comprehensive history and analysis of the Soviet illustrated editions of The Lord of the Rings published between 1981 and 1993, this book explores the production and reception of these works against a backdrop of oppressive state censorship, restrictive publishing practices and logistical struggles of translating such long texts. Highlighting the intense creativity, innovation and resourcefulness of illustrators from the USSR, Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc demonstrates how new forms of Tolkienian imagery reforged Western fantasy artwork and brought fresh iconographical diversity to late 20th-century fantasy visuals. In employing comparative analysis to reconcile the neglected Soviet illustrations with their popular Western equivalents, the book situates both pictorial traditions within the wider cultural and political contexts of the period and reflects upon their relevance to current debates regarding visual heterogeneity in fantasy.Carefully reconstructing the diverse Middle-earth visions of illustrators such as Gyozo Vida, Jerzy Czerniawski, Yassen Panov, Alexander Korotich, Èduard Zarjanskij, Denis Gordeev and Sergei Iukhimov, Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc broadens notions of how Tolkien's work was received beyond Anglo-centric, Western audiences. A vivid record of artistic reception and the permeability of cultural boundaries during the final years of Communist rule, author Joel Merriner offers an art historian's analysis of these illustrations of Tolkien's beloved work and sheds new light on the role of visual art in shaping cultural content.

Reframing debates surrounding long narratives to explore their impact, this book develops a critical vocabulary for discussing the formal, social, and political affordances of length and duration in fantasy novels, and by extension, other genres.Beloved by fans, fantasy books frequently receive dismissive treatment from book reviewers and academics. For literary critics, lengthy narratives have long posed problems: for aesthetic critics, they are too sprawling and unstructured; for the politically engaged, they are suspect as part of a culture industry that commodifies texts. Reading Length in Fantasy Fiction switches up this discussion of long narratives, exploring their use of repetitions, narrative rhythms, and complexly ramifying structures to shape readers’ perspectives on such concepts as historical causation, group inclusion, the conflict between traditional values and innovation, and human agency in relation to a complex social totality.As the first book-length study of the length of fantasy novels, this book uses insights from aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and cognitive studies to ask both “what does length do for fantasy narratives?” and also “how does fantasy length help us understand the function of extended duration in narrative?” Calling upon readings from a diverse set of writers including J. R. R. Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin, N. K. Jemisin, Marlon James, Barbara Hambly, Steven Erikson, Samuel Delany and Katharine Kerr, Matthew Oliver illustrates the breadth of approaches structuring long fiction and the impact of strategies for managing length on a range of issues including race, gender, and social class. Finally, offering a critical vocabulary for the formal analysis of length and a set of tools for relating the duration of texts to their social and political consequences, this book presents a major intervention in criticism of the fantastic.

With perceptions of reality in the 21st-century increasingly seen as pluralistic and a matter of interpretation, this open access book identifies fantasy literature as a uniquely and highly effective form of storytelling for engaging with our contemporary sense of reality in all its fluidity and complexity.Proposing a new theory of fantasy’s relationship with our reality as a speculative form of mimesis, Elise Kraatila demonstrates how the genre exemplifies literary ways of engaging with the complexities of our contemporary sense of reality by means of “what if?” propositions, grand-scale scenario models, imaginative world-building and thought experiments.Discussing works of 21st-century fantasy by celebrated authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, N. K. Jemisin, Joe Abercrombie and Lev Grossman, Speculative Mimesis in Fantasy Literature lays bare the complexity and interpretive ambiguity that characterizes the relationship between fantasy fiction, the art of storytelling, and our contemporary sense of reality at large. Illuminating how these contemporary storytellers turn to the expressive repertoire of fantasy fiction to explore topical issues from global inequality to climate crisis and the 'post-truth' breakdown of our conception of reality, this book positions fantasy as a major participant in contemporary responses to our ideas of reality with the power to make actual change. Critically acknowledging and interrogating this most popular genre and the ontological and epistemic force of its narratives, Kraatila offers a perspective to fantasy world-building as a form of literary mimesis that highlights the complex and historically changeable conceptions of what it means for fiction to represent reality more generally. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Tampere University, Finland.

Reconsiders the 1820s, an unjustly neglected, highly self-conscious decade defined by massive and anxiety-inducing cultural transformations.Innovative essays cover a broad range of interdisciplinary topics, including book history, periodical culture, media forms, music, theatre, visual art, and provincial and colonial writingInterweaves short keyword essays providing additional insights into major concerns of the decade as expressed in the language of the timeThe product of a collaborative research process bringing together senior scholars and early-career researchersThe 1820s has commonly been overlooked in literary and cultural studies, seen as a barren interregnum between the achievements of Romanticism and the Victorian era proper, or, at best, as a time of transition bridging two major periods of cultural production. This volume contends that the innovations, fears and experiments of the 1820s are both of considerable interest in themselves and vital for comprehending how Victorian and Romantic culture wrote and visioned one another into being. Remediating the 1820s explores the decade's own sense of itself as a period of expansion in terms of the projection of British power and knowledge, but also its tremendous uncertainty about where this left traditional identities and moral values. In doing so, the collection articulates how specific novelties, transformations and anxieties of the time remediated and remade culture and society in manners that continue powerfully to resonate.

The 1820s has commonly been overlooked in literary and cultural studies, seen as a barren interregnum between the achievements of Romanticism and the Victorian era proper, or, at best, as a time of transition bridging two major periods of cultural production. This volume contends that the innovations, fears and experiments of the 1820s are both of considerable interest in themselves and vital for comprehending how Victorian and Romantic culture wrote and visioned one another into being. Remediating the 1820s explores the decade’s own sense of itself as a period of expansion in terms of the projection of British power and knowledge, but also its tremendous uncertainty about where this left traditional identities and moral values. In doing so, the collection articulates how specific novelties, transformations and anxieties of the time remediated and remade culture and society in manners that continue powerfully to resonate.