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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fiction - Fantasy'
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Hirst, Miriam Laufey. "Fantasy and feminism : an intersectional approach to modern children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Bolton, 2018. http://ubir.bolton.ac.uk/1968/.
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This thesis compares modern children’s fantasy literature with older texts, particularly Grimms’ fairy tales. The focus is on tropes from fairy tales and myths that devalue women and femininity. In looking at these tropes, this thesis examines how they are used in modern fiction; whether they are subverted to show a more empowering vision of femininity or simply replicated in a more modern guise. Whereas other approaches in this area have addressed the representation of gender in an isolated fashion, this study adopts an intersectional approach, examining the way that different axes of oppression work together to maintain the patriarchal hegemony of powerful, white, heterosexual men. As intersectional theory has pointed out, mainstream feminism has tended to focus only on the needs and rights of more privileged women, who are themselves complicit in the oppression of their more marginalised “sisters”. Intersectional feminism, in contrast, seeks to dismantle the entire system of interlinked oppressions, rather than allowing some women to benefit from it to the detriment of others. The intersectional issues around feminism that this thesis addresses include race, disability, class, and sexuality. There is also an emphasis on female solidarity, which is championed as an effective strategy to weaken the hold of patriarchy and subvert it in its aim to “divide and conquer”. It is this intersectional approach to children’s fantasy literature that is seen as the thesis’s main contribution to knowledge. The primary texts under examination are mainly from the United Kingdom, but also include works from the United States, Australia, and Germany. All of them were originally published between 1980 and 2013. The thesis explores heroism, beauty, magic, and gender performance in these works, showing how such themes can be dealt with in ways that are either reactionary and detrimental or progressive and empowering.
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Drolet, Cynthia L. (Cynthia Lea). "Four Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1988. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500548/.
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This thesis contains four stories of fantasy and science fiction. Four story lengths are represented: the short short ("Dragon Lovers"), the shorter short story ("Homecoming"), the longer short story ("Shadow Mistress"), and the novel ("Sword of Albruch," excerpted here).
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Knez, Dora. ""The Release" : a creative writing thesis." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60609.
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The genre of fantasy contains texts which are unlike, or distance from, the real or empirical world--the world of the reader's experience. Nevertheless, fantasy texts can reveal truths which are relevant to the empirical world, and thus fantasy texts can be said to have cognitive value. The notion of possible worlds, the semiotic theory of metaphor, and a discussion of ambiguity are the three critical approaches used to investigate the cognitive value of fantasy texts. The stories in this collection provide a sampler of fantasy figures--such as mermaids, ghosts and living mummies--and make use of the emotional power of ambiguity.
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Flegal, Kathleen M. "Magic words the phonology of fantasy neologisms /." Fairfax, VA : George Mason University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1920/3283.
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Thesis (M.A,)--George Mason University, 2008.Vita: p. 78. Thesis director: Steven Weinberger. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 11, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-77). Also issued in print.
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Vaisarova, Julie. "Witches, Warlocks, and...Fulgurites?: Learning Information from Fantasy Fiction." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/470.
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Although fictional stories are not always an accurate source of information about the world, research has suggested that readers encode information from such stories in a manner that allows it to be freely retrieved and used in later situations. The present study compared readers’ use of novel information from realistic and fantasy fiction to examine whether this apparent lack of compartmentalization stems from readers’ assumption that fictional stories accurately portray reality. In an adaptation of Marsh, Meade, and Roediger’s (2003) paradigm, 259 adult United States residents read a realistic or fantasy story containing a series of obscure facts and then answered a purportedly unrelated set of questions that asked about these facts. Participants’ processing of novel story information differed by genre, such that participants who read a fantasy story were less likely to use information from the story on the subsequent test than participants who read a realistic story. Although this effect was not explained by participants’ trust in the source genre’s veracity, participants’ confidence in answers attributed solely to the experimental story suggested that there was a component of post-retrieval evaluation based on perceptions of the source genre. Together, these results suggest that readers’ processing of information from realistic and fantasy fiction differs, such that readers may be partly protected from using potentially inaccurate information from fantasy stories in later situations. However, the precise point in the process of encoding, retrieval, and application where these differences arise, and their implications for readers’ acquisition of misinformation, remains to be specified.
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Notaro, Anna. "Fluctuations of fantasy : postmodernist contamination in Angela Carter's fiction." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1996. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2969/.
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What I am offering in this thesis is a kind "contaminated" reading, that is a reading deeply involved in the stylistic and ideological dissonances of Carter's fiction, to the point that they are assimilated within different and, in some cases, contrastive interpretative paths. But the contamination works also on another level: to read Carter is to tackle some very complex questions, including the possible articulations of Marxism and deconstruction/postmodernism or, more generally, the role played by ideology with reference to the tendencies and movements deriving from poststructuralism; my argument is that Carter's writing itself is heavily "contaminated" by postmodernist aesthetics despite her implicit denial and negative attitude towards it. In the thesis I have discussed three collections of short-stones (The Bloody Chamber in Chapter 1, Black Venus and Fireworks in Chapter II) and four novels (The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, The Passion of New Eve. Nights at Circus and Wise Children from Chapter HI to VI). I have also quoted extensively from the numerous interviews given by Carter in different stages of her career and from her critical works, in particular from The Sadeian Woman, a sort of aesthetic manifesto for a literary corpus in which the worlds of Eros and sexuality play a crucial role in transgressing and subverting the habitual dichotomies of gender. In the final Chapter (VII) Carter's work is located in the framework of the debate between feminist and postmodernist thought.
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Gomez, Melissa Anne. "Influences of Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom on Bias." W&M ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626814.
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Sanchez-Taylor, Joy Ann. "Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity." Scholar Commons, 2014. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5302.
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Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity examines the influence of science fiction/fantasy (SFF) as applied to twentieth century and contemporary African American, Native American and Latina/o texts. Bringing together theories of racial identity, hybridity, and postcolonialism, this project demonstrates how twentieth century and contemporary ethnic American SFF authors are currently utilizing tropes of SFF to blur racial distinctions and challenge white/other or colonizer/colonized binaries. Ethnic American SFF authors are able to employ SFF landscapes that address narratives of victimization or colonization while still imagining worlds where alternate representations of racial and ethnic identity are possible.
My multicultural approach pairs authors of different ethnicities in order to examine common themes that occur in ethnic American SFF texts. The first chapter examines SFF post-apocalyptic depictions of racial and ethnic identity in Samuel Delany's Dhalgren and Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles. Chapter two explores depictions of ethnic undead figures in Octavia Butler's Fledgling and Daniel José Older's "Phantom Overload." Chapter three addresses themes of indigenous and migrant colonization in Celu Amberstone's "Refugees" and Rosura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita's Lunar Braceros: 2125-2148.
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Melano, Anne. "On divergence in fantasy." Master's thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/17998.
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The original thesis contains the novel "Stranger, I" as an integral part of the thesis. However this novel has been omitted in this digital copy.Thesis (MA (Hons))--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2006.
Bibliography: p. 93-97.
On divergence in fantasy -- Introduction -- Preliminary -- The thousand and one definitional nights -- Characteristic works: inclusions and exclusions -- Critical objections to fantasy -- Conclusion.
On Divergence in Fantasy explores the ways in which fantasy criticism continually redefines its boundaries, without arriving at agreement. The paper draws on Foucault to suggest that these disputes and dispersions are characteristic of the operation of fantasy critisim as a discursive formation.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
97 p
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Westlake, David Michael. "Fantasy and Imagination: Discovering the Threshold of Meaning." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2005. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/WestlakeDM2005.pdf.
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Brooks, Emily Ruth-Diehl. "Hypha." TopSCHOLAR®, 2019. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3141.
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For hundreds of years, Ona and her people have been unknowingly enslaved. Ona has given everything she is to the spiritual people on the mountain, including her own son. So when rumors spread through the swamp’s magical mycelium that she and her people are slaves, Ona must find the truth and, if possible, reunite with her son before he becomes as evil as those who raised him. Meanwhile, her son has his own doubts after his people leave his friend to die. As he and Ona journey separately to save the people they love, they find everything they believed to be true falling apart, making room for a new kind of faith and life.
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Pavlik, Anthony. "A view from elsewhere : the spatiality of children's fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1891.
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Fantasy other worlds are often seen as alternatives with which to critique the ‘real’ world, or as offering spaces where child protagonists can take advantage of the otherness they encounter in their own process of maturation. However, such readings of fantasy other worlds, rather than celebrating heterogeneity, implicitly see ‘other’ spaces as ‘unreal’ and there either to support the real in some way, as being in some way inferior to the real, or in need of salvation by protagonists from the real world. This thesis proposes a reading of such texts that draws on social theories of constructed spatiality in order to examine first how, to varying degrees, and depending upon the attitude of authors towards the figure of the child, such ‘fantasy’ places can be seen as potentially real “thirdspaces” of performance and agency for protagonists, and thus as neutral spaces of activity rather than confrontation or growth and, second, how such presentations may be seen as reflecting back into the potential for the spatial activity of readers.
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Holappa, H. (Harri). "The information-seeking behaviour of science fiction and fantasy writers." Master's thesis, University of Oulu, 2017. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201702231225.
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The topic of this master’s thesis is the information-seeking behaviour of creative writers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. The artistic information-seeking behaviour on the whole has been the subject of only a handful of published studies, and creative writer studies have been almost non-existent. This study utilized the online questionnaire method with an emphasis on Likert items and nonparametric statistical analysis to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the information sources and channels used by SF&F writers in the three work roles of creative writing proposed by this study: the researcher, artisan and entrepreneur roles? 2) What characteristics of information sources are seen by SF&F writers to be the most important? 3) How writing genre, writing experience, writer attainment and gender affect their choice of information sources and channels? 4) What information barriers do they experience? The questionnaire was submitted to 16 English-speaking SF&F forums, drawing 130 participants from nine forums. The findings suggest that the information-seeking behaviour of SF&F writers is characterized by a heavy use of search engines, interpersonal sources and ‘the self’ as an information source. In the researcher role, additional importance is given to online encyclopedias and databases, to fiction and non-fiction, and to the nature and environment. Information-seeking in the artisan role is not associated with any particular sources, albeit buying behaviour might be higher. Information seeking in the entrepreneur role was shown to be more interpersonal in nature than in the other two roles. The most important source characteristic for SF&F writers is trustworthiness. Scifi writers are more frequent users of online news services than fantasy writers in the researcher role. Accumulating writing experience is associated with more frequent use of public libraries, archives and museums. Starting writers tend to use scholars and experts less. Those with 6–10 years of experience may have entered a period in their writing lives when career-related information seeking from online databases, media-sharing services and online news services is higher. Female writers tend to be more enthusiastic users of other people’s experiences in the researcher role, and of various channels of learning to write in the artisan and entrepreneur roles. AWriter attainment is slightly correlated with the writer having a little higher tolerance on poor accessibility and timeliness of sources, and him or her holding little less preference in already familiar sources. The majority of information barriers experienced by SF&F writers are environmental barriers, especially money-related ones. This study showed that there are patterns of behaviour among SF&F writers that, when researched further, enable a more holistic view on the general human information seeking. Understanding the different preferences in creative writers’ information seeking in the three work roles will also make the development of more effective and targeted information products and services possible, especially at those academic libraries serving student patrons in the growing number of higher education creative writing programsTämän pro gradu -tutkielman aihe on tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajien tiedonhankintakäyttäytyminen. Aiempi taiteilijoita koskeva tiedonhankintakäyttäytymisen tutkimus on ollut vähäistä ja luovia kirjoittajia koskeva tutkimus lähes olematonta. Tutkielman metodi on verkkolomakkeella toteutettu kyselytutkimus, jonka painopisteet ovat Likert-asteikollisissa kysymyksissä ja epäparametrisessa tilastollisessa analyysissä. Tutkimuskysymykset ovat seuraavat: 1) Mitkä ovat tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajien käyttämät tiedonlähteet ja -kanavat kolmessa tämän tutkimuksen ehdottamassa työroolissa: tutkijarooli, artesaanirooli ja yrittäjärooli? 2) Mitkä tiedonlähteiden piirteet ovat kirjoittajien mielestä tärkeimmät? 3) Miten kirjoittajien genre, kokemus, rahalliseen ansioon yltäminen ja sukupuoli vaikuttavat tiedonlähteiden valintaan? 4) Mitä tiedonhankinnan esteitä kirjoittajat kohtaavat? Kyselylomake lähetettiin 16 englanninkieliselle tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittamisen foorumille, ja se keräsi 130 vastaajaa yhdeksältä foorumilta. Tuloksista kävi ilmi, että tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajien tiedonhankintakäyttäytymistä luonnehtii hakukoneiden, interpersoonallisten lähteiden ja ”itsen” käyttö tiedonlähteenä. Tutkijaroolissa arvoa annetaan myös tietokannoille ja -sanakirjoille verkossa, fiktiiviselle ja tietokirjallisuudelle sekä luonnolle ja ympäristölle. Artesaaniroolin tiedonhankintaa ei hallitse mitkään tietyt lähteet, joskin lähteiden hankinta saattaa olla yleistä. Yrittäjäroolin tiedonhankinta on luonteeltaan interpersoonallisempaa kuin muiden. Tärkein tiedonlähteen piirre tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajille on luotettavuus. Tieteiskirjoittajat ovat fantasiakirjoittajia aktiivisempia verkkouutispalvelujen käyttäjiä tutkijaroolissa. Kirjoittamiskokemuksen kertyminen on liitoksissa yleisten kirjastojen, arkistojen ja museoiden käytön lisääntymiseen. Aloittelevat kirjoittajat käyttävät muita ryhmiä vähemmän hyväkseen asiantuntijoita ja tutkijoita. He joilla on 6–10 vuotta kirjoittajakokemusta saattavat olla urallaan vaiheessa, jossa kirjoittajauraan liittyvä tiedonhankinta on yleistä verkon tietokannoista, tietosanakirjoista, medianjakopalveluista ja uutispalveluista. Naispuoliset kirjoittajat hyödyntävät miehiä aktiivisemmin muiden ihmisten kokemuksia tutkijaroolissa ja joitakin kirjoittamaan oppimisen kanavia artesaani- ja yrittäjäroolissa. Rahalliseen ansioon yltäminen korreloi hiukan korkeamman tiedonlähteiden huonon tavoitettavuuden ja myöhäisyyden sietokyvyn kanssa sekä jo entuudestaan tuttujen lähteiden hiukan vähemmän suosimisen kanssa. Tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajien yleisimmät tiedonhankinnan esteet ovat ympäristöön ja erityisesti rahaan liittyvät esteet. Tutkielma osoitti, että tieteis- ja fantasiakirjoittajien tiedonhankintaan liittyy piirteitä, joita syvemmin tutkimalla voidaan päästä entistä kokonaisvaltaisempaan käsitykseen ihmisen tiedonhankinnasta. Ymmärtämällä luovien kirjoittajien tiedonhankintaa erilaisissa työrooleissa on myös mahdollista kehittää entistä parempia heille räätälöityjä informaatiopalveluja ja -tuotteita. Tämä pätee erityisesti niihin korkeakoulukirjastoihin, jotka palvelevat kansainvälisesti koko ajan kasvavaa joukkoa luovan kirjoittamisen opiskelulinjoissa olevia
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Cupitt, Catherine Anne. "Space opera: a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy." Thesis, Curtin University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/1082.
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This thesis considers space opera as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy.“Falling Stars,” the creative component which includes fantasy, space opera and science fiction stories, constitutes a spectrum of speculative fiction. In order to illustrate the similarities and difference between the genres represented in the spectrum, I focus on the central figure of the alien other and the ways in which such a figure can be gendered and embodied. The space opera novella combines motifs of both fantasy and science fiction within the figure of the cyborg, Orlando, who is transgendered and hyperchangeably embodied.The exegesis offers a theoretical context through which to view the creative work. I argue that space operas are melodramatic adventure stories, which operate as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy, using the non-realist expectations inherent in both, but mixing the extrapolations and icons of science fiction with the self-consistent but unbelievable discontinuities of fantasy. I also consider space opera’s tendency to exhibit a conservative, unexamined colonialistic imperative, with the attendant assumptions that create a potential for feminist subversion.
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Degim, Iclal Alev. "TURKISH FANTASY FICTION FILMS THEN AND NOW: AN ANALYSIS OF FANTASY FILMS PRODUCED IN EARLY 1970s TURKEY." OpenSIUC, 2016. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1303.
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Turkish cinema has produced very few examples of fantasy fiction genre films since its beginning in 1914 except for the 1970s Yeşilçam era. The first film ever to be made in Turkey by a Turkish filmmaker (Fuat Uzkınay) is credited as Ayastefanos’taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı (The Destruction of the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos) (Panaite, 8), which is an actuality film similar to Lumiere brothers’ shorts. The lack of recognition of fantasy fiction in Turkish film history and literature can be attributed to the social and political movements along with the modernization process in the republic’s history to migration, alienation, and the contradictory Turkish identity. A survey of Turkish novels reveals a parallel lack of fantasy fiction in literature. In analyzing this lack of fantasy fiction films in literature, Veli Uğur concludes that it is the late modernization process (he claims starts with early 2000’s) within the Turkish social, cultural sphere that influenced this almost complete non-existence of the genre (136). A late modernization is not sufficient to explain the fantasy fictions rise in 1970s and complete disappearance afterwards in Turkish cinema. This project’s main concern is to identify the reasons behind the lack of fantasy fiction films in Turkish cinema by analyzing the films produced in the early peak period of Yeşilçam (early 1970s). I look at the cinematic texts through the lens of attachment to realism and tradition, the refusal and re-appearance of folklore, the definition of Turkish identity prior to the acceptance of Islam, and the severed ties with the Ottoman identity. These factors all created a crisis for the modern Turk. The investigation addresses the effect of the emerging Turkish culture of the early 1970s on the production and perception of fantasy in films as a way of unearthing the social struggles and desires of that time. Contrary to mainstream literature, the Yeşilçam (Green Pine) era (roughly between 1960 and 1980) produced quite a few examples (36 in total from 1970 to 1979 (Önk, 3875)); however, these are only A movies and thus the perception that there aren’t many fantasy films produced in Turkey is wrong. If B films with low-budgets are added the total number rises to 135 films out of a total of roughly 200 films were produced during this nine-year period. The influence of European and American culture after the proclamation of Turkey as a republic in 1923 aided a rise in art and cultural events (such as film festivals) that affected the production of films. Yeşilçam was the peak of this movement towards modernization, and although the production values and budgets for the films were very low, became they extremely successful. These films were produced and distributed for the Turkish audience. Turkish movie theaters of the 1970’s were mainly in big cities.
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Hall, Rebecca Thomas Ron. "The fantastic and related subgenres in three contemporary novels." Waco, Tex. : Baylor University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/4190.
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Lopez, Miguel Anthony. "New World Massive." PDXScholar, 2017. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3675.
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A New World, At Last is set on a distant colony world, many thousands of years into the future.
The path there has not been direct or bloodless. The humans who colonized this New World are the descendants of an Earth that has suffered cataclysmic climate change, collapse, and a subsequent millennia-long reconstruction. They stand on the shoulders of giants, uncovering and exploiting the technology of the Old Earth in order to ensure that such a collapse, once discovered, can never happen again. These new people, Colonials, set about making the New World in the image of their own.
A scant hundred years after they settle the world, the Ecumene arrive.
The Ecumene are humans as well, our own descendants, refugees who packed onto massive, life-sustaining generation ships that left Old Earth, burning a slow and steady path towards distant, potentially habitable worlds. The journey for the Ecumene took nearly a thousand years; in this time, a cult of destiny and destination fomented aboard a ship they began to see as their ark. They follow The Path, the way to the promised land of the New World, known to their distant ancestors as their ultimate destination.
Due to the realities of space travel, time passed differently for the Ecumene than it did for the Colonials. What was a thousand year journey on the ship translates to a more than six thousand year period of time back on Earth. The massive gulf in time and experience makes for a difficult reunion between these two disparate relatives.
Tensions arise as the Colonial Administration attempts to process these sudden arrivals and to integrate them into their system to prevent a complete collapse of their nascent biome. They hold the revelatory memory of a world subjected to poor stewardship and shy away from continuing down that path again. They see themselves as outnumbered and unfairly burdened, the sudden caretakers of a vast population of the children of the humans who sent the Old Earth into a long, terrible dark age.
The bulk of A New World, At Last takes place thirty years after the arrival of the Ecumene ark, the Armstrong. A New World, At Last follows Edison Moss, the young son of a Colonial farmer ("agrineer"). Ed has recently discovered that he was adopted illegally; he is undocumented, from an unwanted class. In an act of rebellion, he leaves home on a quest of discovery, only to find that the answers he gets are not necessarily the answers to the questions he wanted to ask. His decade-long journey takes him from the heart of the colony to the frontier; along the way he befriends an agent of the Ecumene's more violent resistant group and becomes a participant in the movement.
A New World, At Last also follows the story of an artist contemporary with Ed's time. Victor James Custodio, famous sculptor and crafter of prosthetic bodies for the rulers of Earth, flees to the New World in a quest to outrun a fate that has been chasing him through all of his lives. Victor's story parallels Ed's in a sense as both are, ultimately, pilgrimages; attempts to ask and have answered that ultimate question: who am I, where do I belong, and what do I do about it?
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Chen, Jou-An. "An exploration of nature and human development in young adult historical fantasy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/282878.
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Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.
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Ersoy, Gozde. "Trajectories, thresholds, transformations : coming of age in classic modern fantasy fiction." Thesis, Brunel University, 2016. http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/13606.
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This thesis examines and explores the process of coming of age in successful fantasy fiction series, including J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel and its prequel The Hobbit, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. In particular, it is suggested that the huge popularity of fantasy stems from the fact that it provides a representation of human agency significantly at odds with the everyday experience of an increasingly bureaucratized and financially-determined world. Analysis shows how fantasy texts provide a universal model that help younger readers to understand the process of maturity as individuation and entry into the intersubjective social world. The central protagonists of such texts have to learn to master concepts such as seeing oneself in the other through intersubjective dialogues, objectifying one’s self in the world, and coping with their own battles, in the process of finding their way to maturity. This fictional “quest” or “journey” provides a model for readers to assess their own realities and actions, which in turn has the effect of changing their understanding and enabling them to critique their own lives. It is demonstrated how these classic and widely translated works of fantastic literature, which reach a huge crossover readership, may be understood in terms of parallel transformational stages such as confusion, inattentional blindness, fear, courage and various attempts of learning the need for moderation. Overall, this analysis, comprising the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, anthropology, education, behavioural economics, sociology, media, and history, explores the processes of transformation and maturation within fantasy literature. At the same time, the case for fantasy literature’s uniqueness in its capacity to reveal the mechanisms of human agency is substantiated within a theoretical framework.
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Meyer, Lois A. "Accomplishing shared meaning(s) through group talk : fact, fiction, fantasy or...? /." The Ohio State University, 1991. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487687485809177.
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Hort, Harold 1920. "Fact and fiction, form and fantasy : the novels of Elizabeth Jolley." Thesis, Department of English, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5430.
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Bleecker, Timothy Jonathon. "The Christian romanticism of George MacDonald : a study of his thought and fiction /." Thesis, Connect to Dissertations & Theses @ Tufts University, 1990.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 1990.Submitted to the Dept. of English Literature. Adviser: Martin Green. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [261]-269). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;
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Freeman, Pamela. "Blood ties: and 'Kings. what a good idea' : monarchy in epic fantasy fiction." University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2100/403.
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The thesis Blood Ties is a novel in the epic fantasy tradition. It is intended to be the first of The Castings Trilogy. A synopsis of the second and third books of the trilogy is also included. The exegesis, “‘Kings. What a good idea.’: Monarchy in epic fantasy fiction”, examines some of the reasons writers from democratic countries may choose to use monarchical political structures in epic fantasy novels. It considers evidence from folktale research, primate behavioural studies, literary traditions, both ancient and modern, and the effect of religious doctrine and history on the symbolic role of the monarch. Folktales are found to have had very little effect on the role of kings in epic fantasy, which has been influenced by a combination of literary traditions, including the Arthurian saga and the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. More profoundly, the meaning of the king’s role has been influenced by the Christian mythos in two ways: the king is a Christ surrogate who sacrifices his own safety for the good of the body politic and, in being successful against evil, restores a version of Paradise/Eden for his people.
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Porta, Fernando. "Narrative strategies in H.G. Wells's romances & short stories (1884-1910)." Thesis, University of Reading, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.339482.
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Brennan, Joseph Carl Linden. "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy: new approaches to slash fiction." Thesis, Department of Media and Communications, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5872.
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This thesis uses slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural to suggest two new slash typologies. While existing frameworks — romantopia (concerned with sex) and intimatopia (concerned with intimacy) — are useful, I argue that many slash stories fall outside the scope of these two terms into two newly proposed categories: paratopia and monstropia. Paratopic slash is centrally concerned with psychological change or geographical repositioning and realises, like romantopia and intimatopia, potentials of homosocial desire. Monstropic slash is centrally concerned with perversity and realises potentials of homosexual panic; it is a genre of slash fiction until now unexplored by slash scholarship. To illustrate these frameworks I discuss Supernatural slash stories in detail. Supernatural was chosen to illustrate both paratopia and monstropia because it is arguably a text that promotes homosexual panic as much as it does homosocial desire. I also argue that Supernatural slash, which would ordinarily be classified as romantopic or intimatopic, is paratopic due to the changes necessary to negotiate the characters’ homophobia and authentically present them in either sexual or intimate love. In conclusion, I argue that paratopia and monstropia are useful frameworks for understanding the ‘other worlds’ that slash inhabits — worlds beyond the reach of ‘topias’ romantopia and intimatopia.
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Lottiaux, Mathieu. "Herméneutique des mondes disjonctifs : le sacré et ses conséquences dans la fantasy et la science-fiction (1950-1989)." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Valenciennes, Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, 2021. http://www.theses.fr/2021UPHF0051.
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L’objectif de notre travail est de réunir, au sein d’une analyse commune, les récits de science-fiction et de fantasy, d’en comprendre les mécanismes transversaux et d’en proposer à la fois une relecture et une herméneutique. Pour cela, nous posons l’hypothèse, en nous appuyant sur les travaux de Mircea Eliade et Marc Angenot, que les récits de fantasy et de science-fiction sont des « histoires sacrées » soutenues par un deus otiosus au sein de mondes disjonctifs. La diégèse (le monde fictionnel) de ces récits inclut donc un sacré qui se manifeste (hiérophanies) différemment selon les récits, suivant la sensibilité (Roger Caillois) des personnages, malgré l’apparition de motifs récurrents (l’origine, la paternité, l’espace, la prédiction) et de figures fréquentes (l’apocalypse, la cosmogonie, le père, la mère, le paysage, la prophétie…) ce qui implique une organisation sociale du sacré (Hannah Arendt). A partir de là, nous observons les régulations (Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari ; Roger Caillois) du sacré dans la diégèse et les constantes et variables qui se dégagent au niveau du temps (Mircea Eliade ; Jean-Marie Grassin ; Jean-Paul Engélibert ; Niccholas Serruys), de l’espace (Anna Bugajska ; Roger Caillois ; Hannah Arendt) et de la justice (Roger Caillois ; Hélène Machinal ; Brian Attebery). L’espace diégétique apparait comme un composé de sacré et de profane qui nous permet l’observation de mécanismes transversaux à tous les récits. Notre dernière partie applique les constantes et les variables, issues de notre deuxième partie, articulées par le personnage et sa quête, à des ouvrages opposés par la critique afin de relire l’opposition de la science-fiction et de la fantasy et d’en proposer une relecture commune, dépassant les frontières génériques et temporelles. Les mondes disjonctifs alors des « histoires sacrées » dont les constantes et les variables, dans leur articulation, deviennent une métaphore sociale du sacréThe aim of our work is to understand, in a same analysis, the stories of science fiction and fantasy, to extract the transversal mechanisms and to propose, in a same time, a rereading and a hermeneutic. 333 We base our analysis on the hypothesis that the stories of science fiction and fantasy are “sacred stories” (Mircea Eliade) maintained, in the diegesis (fictional world), by a deus otiosus which is called by Marc Angenot, the absent paradigm. By mixing the works of Marc Angenot and Mircea Eliade, we propose the assumption that the diegesis contains a sacred that emerges (hierophanies) by many ways, and depends on the sensibility of the characters (Roger Caillois). However, we can observe recurrent frames (the origin, the paternity, the space, the prediction) and repetitive figures (the apocalypse, the cosmogony, the father, the mother, the landscape, the prophecy, etc.) that imply a social organization of the sacred (Hannah Arendt). In our second part, we observe the fluctuations (Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari ; Roger Caillois) of the sacred in the diegesis and we extract the constants and the variables about the time (Mircea Eliade ; Jean-Marie Grassin ; Jean-Paul Engélibert ; Niccholas Serruys), the space (Anna Bugajska ; Roger Caillois ; Hannah Arendt) and the justice (Roger Caillois ; Hélène Machinal ; Brian Attebery). So, the diegetic space is made up by sacred and profane which allows us to observe transversal mechanisms in the stories. Our last part, we apply the constants and the variables extracted from the second part and centred around the main character and his quest. We chose productions opposed by the critics to reread the division between the science fiction and the fantasy and to propose a new and common perspective, beyond the generic and temporal borders. So the disjunctive worlds appear like “sacred stories” with variables and constants that are a social metaphor of the sacred
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Kawakami, Chiyoko. "The hybrid narrative world of Izumi Kyōka /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6670.
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Bowman, Travis E. "Crossroads and Crow Feathers." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2019. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2591.
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This thesis uses the short story form to examine the influence of myth, magick, and the supernatural on the interstitial areas of the United States. The power of words as a force for change figures prominently in these stories. This thesis looks at the monstrous as it moves in the darkness and in the minds of humans, but also at the tremendous depths of compassion and courage we find in ourselves when faced with monstrous situations.
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Fenech, Giuliana. "Reconfiguring the reader : convergence and participation in modern young adult fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/3681.
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This thesis explores digital-age literary and reading practices as they were influenced by participatory culture at the turn of the century. Participatory culture is analysed here through the work of Henry Jenkins, Hans Heino Ewers, Margaret Mackey and Katy Varnelis and is recognised as one in which individuals are socially connected to each other in an environment that offers support for creating and sharing interpretations and original works. It has relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic participation, and fosters the sense of community growing around people’s common interests and ideologies, as expressed through performative manifestations such as gaming and fandom. Because juvenile fantasy fiction generally, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007) specifically, were at the centre of significant developments in response to participatory culture, Rowling’s books are used as a case study on the basis of which changing practices of reading, writing and interpretation of story, principally by children and young people, are mapped and appraised. One aim of this thesis is to evaluate how far participatory culture has affected what it means to be a reader of a text that exists in multiple formats: how each version of the text constructs and addresses its readers/viewers/players/co-creators, and the dynamics and interdependence between the different versions. A second but related aim is to test the claims of new media theorists, including Janet Murray, Pierre Lévy and Marie-Laure Ryan, among others, to establish how far texts, readers and the processes of reading have in fact changed. Specifically, it looks at how far the promises of reader participation and co-creation have been fulfilled, especially within the genre of children’s literature.
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Gevers, Nicholas David. "Mirrors of the past : versions of history in science fiction and fantasy." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10511.
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The primary argument of this Thesis is that Science Fiction (SF) is a form of Historical Fiction, one which speculatively appropriates elements of the past in fulfilment of the ideological expectations of its genre readership. Chapter One presents this definition, reconciling it with some earlier definitions of SF and justifying it by means of a comparison between SF and the Historical Novel. Chapter One also identifies SF's three modes of historical appropriation (historical extension, imitation and modification) and the forms of fictive History these construct, including Future History and Alternate History; theories of history, and SF's own ideological changes over time, have helped shape the genre's varied borrowings from the past. Some works of Historical Fantasy share the characteristics of SF set out in Chapter One. The remaining Chapters analyse the textual products of SF's imitation and modification of history, i.e. Future and Alternate Histories. Chapter Two discusses various Future Histories completed or at least commenced before 1960, demonstrating their consistent optimism, their celebration of Science and of heroic individualism, and their tendency to resolve the cyclical pattern of history through an ideal linear simplification or 'theodicy'. Chapter Three shows the much greater ideological and technical diversity of Future Histories after 1960, their division into competing traditional (Libertarian), Posthistoric (pessimistic), and critical utopian categories, an indication of SF's increasing complexity and fragmentation.
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Hommel, Élodie. "Lectures de science-fiction et fantasy : enquête sociologique sur les réceptions et appropriations des littératures de l'imaginaire." Thesis, Lyon, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017LYSEN068/document.
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À la suite des enquêtes menées par Annie Collovald et Erik Neveu dans Lire le noir, et par Christine Détrez et Olivier Vanhée dans Les mangados, sur les lectures de romans policiers pour l'une et de mangas pour l'autre, ce travail de thèse porte sur les lectures de littératures de l'imaginaire (catégorie éditoriale qui regroupe science-fiction, fantasy et une partie du fantastique). Après une étude de l'offre éditoriale française contemporaine, l'enquête de terrain, qui a été menée par entretiens auprès de lecteurs et lectrices âgés de 20 à 35 ans, a cherché à mettre en évidence leurs motivations, leurs appropriations de cette lecture et les réceptions qu'ils en font. Tout comme les mangas ou les romans policiers, la science-fiction, et plus généralement les littératures de l'imaginaire, constituent un genre dont la légitimité n'est pas acquise, souvent perçu comme une échappée hors du réel pour des amateurs parfois assimilés de façon péjorative à des exclus sociaux. Ces questions ont été abordées dans la recherche à travers différents angles d'approche : la réception des catégories éditoriales par les jeunes interrogé·e·s, les raisons de lire science-fiction et fantasy, les différents types de réceptions et appropriations du genre, les parcours de lecture en littératures de l'imaginaire, les pratiques culturelles et sociabilités qui prennent place autour de la lecture, le rapport des lecteurs et lectrices à la légitimité ambiguë du genreFollowing the research led by Annie Collovald and Erik Neveu on the reading of detective novels, and by Christine Détrez and Olivier Vanhée on the reading of mangas, this thesis studies the reading of the “littératures de l’imaginaire” (« imaginary / non realistic literature », or « speculative fiction »: a publishing category including science fiction, fantasy, and some fantastic stories). After a study of the currently available products on the French market, the field survey, which was conducted through interviews with readers aged 20 to 35, highlighted their reading motivations, appropriations, and receptions. Like mangas or detective novels, science fiction, and more broadly speculative fiction, form a literary genre whose legitimacy is not acquired. It is often perceived as an escape from the real for amateurs, and its fans are sometimes pejoratively assimilated to social outsiders. These questions were addressed in research through different prisms: the reception of publishing categories by the young adults who were interviewed, the reasons to read science fiction and fantasy, various types of receptions and appropriations of the genre, reading paths in speculative fiction, cultural and sociability practices that take place around reading, and the relationship of readers to the ambiguous legitimacy of the genre
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Delatte, Isabella Imber. "Roses and Foxes." Kent State University Honors College / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ksuhonors155472117699106.
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Wylie, Erin N. "The Cunning Folk." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2016. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2203.
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Lundgren, Emily Lundgren. "Trees Struck by Lightning Burning from The Inside Out." Youngstown State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1523953422992737.
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Wong, Wai-yi Dorothy, and 黃偉儀. "Form, force, and sociality: a study of the literary fantastic with special reference to Angela Carter and MoYan." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31246114.
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Leyburn, Boyd Harlan III. "The body in fantasy : how the human body informs science fiction set design." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/22980.
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McSporran, Cathy. "Letting the winter in : myth revision and the winter solstice in fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5812/.
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This is a Creative Writing thesis, which incorporates both critical writing and my own novel, Cold City. The thesis explores ‘myth-revision’ in selected works of Fantasy fiction. Myth-revision is defined as the retelling of traditional legends, folk-tales and other familiar stories in such as way as to change the story’s implied ideology. (For example, Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ revises ‘Red Riding Hood’ into a feminist tale of female sexuality and empowerment.) Myth-revision, the thesis argues, has become a significant trend in Fantasy fiction in the last three decades, and is notable in the works of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman. Despite its incorporation of supernatural elements, myth-revision is an agnostic or even atheistic phenomenon, which takes power from deities and gives it to moral humans instead. As such it represents a rebellion against the ‘Founding Fathers’ of Fantasy, writers such as Tolkien or CS Lewis, whose works stress the rightful superiority of divine figures. The thesis pays particular attention to how the myths surrounding the Winter Solstice are revised in this kind of fiction. Part One consists of my novel Cold City, with appropriate annotations. In Part Two, Chapter One compares and contrasts Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials with CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. It argues that Pullman’s sequence of children’s novels is an anti-Narnia, which revises CS Lewis’s conservative Christian allegory into one supporting Pullman’s secular humanist viewpoint. Chapter Two explores myth-revision in Elizabeth Hand’s novel of adult Fantasy Winterlong. It examines how Hand ‘revises’ the Hellenic myth of the god Dionysos, especially as it is related to Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae. Chapter Three examines the use of ‘Ragnarok’ – the ancient Norse myth of the end of the world – in Cold City.
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Hurst, Edmund. "Dawnsmoke and the influence of character tropes on the construction of fantasy fiction." Thesis, University of Hull, 2017. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:16540.
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This thesis is formed of a fantasy novel, Dawnsmoke, and an exegesis that will examine the role played by character tropes on the creation of the three principal protagonists in Dawnsmoke. Dawnsmoke interweaves three narrative strands from a diverse set of principal protagonists. Luke, Samantha and Kain combine narratives in order to tell the story of Arx, a city where fire burns blue and memories can be trapped in metal. Told through three distinct third-person-limited voices, this novel explores the concept of self-induced memory loss, isolation and the price of heroism. The exegesis considers the definitions of fantasy offered by C. N. Manlove, W. R. Irwin, T. E. Apter, Tzvetan Todorov and Rosemary Jackson and contrasts these definitions with modern considerations from Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Ursula LeGuin and Kazuo Ishiguro. It posits a definition of fantasy literature that encompasses the traditions that Dawnsmoke shares. It analyses the impact of specific sub-genres on the character norms in Dawnsmoke. It examines the inception of Luke, Samantha and Kain in relation to common character tropes and how the subversion of these thematic expectations impacts the narrative arc of each character. It observes the techniques used in crafting unique voices for each character. It concludes with an examination of the resolution of each protagonist’s journey.
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Rüster, Johannes. "All-Macht und Raum-Zeit : Gottesbilder in der englischsprachigen Fantasy und Science-fiction /." Berlin : LIT, 2007. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb411199866.
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Sharoni, Josephine. "Vampires and ape men : a Lacanian reading of British fantasy fiction, 1886-1914." Thesis, University of Kent, 2015. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/47511/.
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This thesis offers a close reading from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis of a selection of literary texts published in Britain in the thirty years leading to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. These works, belonging to different genres – science fiction, gothic and the adventure or quest – are loosely categorized as ‘fantasy’ literature as opposed to the realistic novel or short story. My contention is that it is only in conjunction with a consideration of Jacques Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’, that is, his re-examination of the texts of Sigmund Freud, and the work of contemporary theorists writing in Lacan’s wake, such as Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, that the significance of the fanciful plots and devices appearing in the texts emerges. My starting point is the resemblance which the plot of each of these works bears to that of Freud’s Totem and Taboo, published in 1913, which tells of the killing of a primal father. What might be labelled as the return of the primal father, a violent and obscene figure who must be killed again (whereas for Freud this was a unique event which occurred at the beginning of human time), appears in a period when ‘modern’ Britain is coming into a being, that is, an industrialized, urbanized, literate democracy. It can be seen that the re-appearance of this evil primal father figure follows the demise of traditional forms of authority of the agrarian society, that of the ‘everyday’ father, the aristocracy and the church, and concurrently, the increasing dominance of scientific discourse and technology. In this and in further ways which will be discussed in the thesis, the texts bring to light the function of apparently obsolete symbolic frameworks and the corresponding deficiency in modern paradigms of knowledge, in particular, the blind spots of science. This reading thereby diverges sharply from those typical of existing literary criticism in that as opposed to being read in terms of and pertaining to the reconstructed context of a past era, the texts are seen as unfolding common concerns in regard to the modernisation of Britain, thus rendering them still relevant today.
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Ryan, Jennifer Joan. "Introducing Mr Perky : subverting the fantasy trope of immortality in contemporary speculative fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2009. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/30242/1/Jennifer_Ryan_Thesis.pdf.
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The Tide Lords series of fantasy novels set out to examine the issue of immortality. Its purpose was to look at the desirability of immortality, specifically why people actively seek it. It was meant to examine the practicality of immortality, specifically — having got there, what does one do to pass the time with eternity to fill? I also wished to examine the notion of true immortality — immortals who could not be killed.
What I did not anticipate when embarking upon this series, and what did not become apparent until after the series had been sold to two major publishing houses in Australia and the US, was the strength of the immortality tropes. This series was intended to fly in the face of these tropes, but confronted with the reality of such a work, the Australian publishers baulked at the ideas presented, requesting the series be re-written with the tropes taken into consideration. They wanted immortals who could die, mortals who wanted to be immortal. And a hero with a sense of humour.
This exegesis aims to explore where these tropes originated. It will also discuss the ways I negotiated a way around the tropes, and was eventually able to please the publishers by appearing to adhere to the tropes, while still staying true to the story I wanted to tell. As such, this discussion is, in part, an analysis of how an author negotiates the tensions around writing within a genre while trying to innovate within it.
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Ryan, Jennifer Joan. "Introducing Mr Perky : subverting the fantasy trope of immortality in contemporary speculative fiction." Queensland University of Technology, 2009. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/30242/.
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The Tide Lords series of fantasy novels set out to examine the issue of immortality. Its purpose was to look at the desirability of immortality, specifically why people actively seek it. It was meant to examine the practicality of immortality, specifically — having got there, what does one do to pass the time with eternity to fill? I also wished to examine the notion of true immortality — immortals who could not be killed.
What I did not anticipate when embarking upon this series, and what did not become apparent until after the series had been sold to two major publishing houses in Australia and the US, was the strength of the immortality tropes. This series was intended to fly in the face of these tropes, but confronted with the reality of such a work, the Australian publishers baulked at the ideas presented, requesting the series be re-written with the tropes taken into consideration. They wanted immortals who could die, mortals who wanted to be immortal. And a hero with a sense of humour.
This exegesis aims to explore where these tropes originated. It will also discuss the ways I negotiated a way around the tropes, and was eventually able to please the publishers by appearing to adhere to the tropes, while still staying true to the story I wanted to tell. As such, this discussion is, in part, an analysis of how an author negotiates the tensions around writing within a genre while trying to innovate within it.
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Hebert, Florent. "Défense de la décroissance : savoir, pouvoir et autorité dans la fantasy contemporaine." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017TOU20069/document.
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Nous nous intéresserons dans cette étude au lien entre la décroissance — mouvement pluriforme qui tire ses racines de l’écologie radicale — et cinq romans de fantasy contemporains : The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). Nous nous concentrerons sur ce qui nous semble être l’essence de la décroissance, à savoir, d’une part, le refus de considérer la surenchère comme une solution aux problèmes ou l’accumulation comme seule forme de bonheur, et, d’autre part, la diminution volontaire comme moyen d’améliorer la condition humaine.Plus précisément, nous étudierons la diminution de pouvoir, d’autorité et de savoir. Nous nous intéresserons à la représentation de ces trois concepts au travers des procédés narratifs et stylistiques, ainsi que des différentes icônes et figures qui les incarnent, et nous étudierons la façon dont ils mettent en scène une tension constante entre croissance et décroissance. Dans cette optique, le rôle du narrateur et du lecteur dans la création du monde fantastique aura une importance particulière, car il est le cœur même de l’interaction fertile entre savoir et autorité, qui reflète l’accession du protagoniste au pouvoir. C’est la spécificité du traitement de ces concepts par les outils propres à la fantasy et à la science fiction que nous nous attacherons à mettre en lumièreThis study will focus on the relation between degrowth — a multifaceted movement which takes its roots in deep ecology — and five fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings (J. R.R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). The focus will be on the essence of degrowth, viz., on the one hand, a denial of escalation as a solution and of hoarding as the only form of happiness,and on the other hand, a willing diminishing as a means to improve human condition. More specifically, it is the decrease in power, authority and knowledge that will be studied. The emphasis will be on the representation of these three notions through narrative and stylistic devices, as well as on the various icons and figures embodying them, in order to show the way they set up a constant tension between growth and degrowth. To that effect, the role of both narrator and reader in the creation of the fantastic world will be given due consideration, for it is at the very heart of the fruitful interaction between knowledge and authority, which reflects the protagonist’s rise to power. Thus, the specificity of the fantasy and science fiction approach to these notions will be highlighted
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Hao, Ji. ""Double" in traditional Chinese fantastic fictions." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2006. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?1438396.
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Jenike, Elizabeth. "Blood of the Windmaker." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1417439734.
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Varnado, Ethan C. "A Wonder Book." VCU Scholars Compass, 2017. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4965.
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This thesis is a collection of nine short stories about real people dealing with unreal problems. In one story, a small-town man answers a knock at his door, only to find three wisemen, who have followed a star and proclaimed him as their new messiah. In another, a reporter travels across the snowy length of Canada looking to interview people who have witnessed the Virgin Mary materialize above Toronto. Deranged Egyptologists, vampires with diseased blood, wacky witches, and unhappy mediums all inhabit tales whose landscapes span the distance between Chattanooga, Tennessee and the afterlife.
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Ibrahim, Wesam. "Linguistic approaches to crossover fiction : towards an integrated approach to the analysis of text worlds in children's crossover fantasy fiction." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.684376.
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Crawford, Karie. "Turbulent times : epic fantasy in adolescent literature /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2002. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd41.pdf.
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Campbell, Nick. "Children's Neo-Romanticism : the archaeological imagination in British post-War children's fantasy." Thesis, University of Roehampton, 2017. https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentthesis/Children’s-Neo-Romanticism(d8dd7f80-d6a7-4e02-a103-c627adc0fad1).html.
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The focus of this study is a trend in British children’s literature concerning the ancientness of British landscape, with what I argue is a Neo-Romantic sensibility. Neo-Romanticism is marked by highly subjective viewpoints on the countryside, and I argue that it illuminates our understanding of post-war children’s literature, particularly in what is often called its Second Golden Age. Through discussion of four generally overlooked authors, each of importance to this formative publishing era, I aim to explore certain aspects of the Second Golden Age children’s literature establishment. I argue that the trend I critique is characterised by ambiguity, defined by the imaginative practice entailed in the archaeological view.
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Holcomb, Will. "The Sunken Country & Other Stories." OpenSIUC, 2020. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2735.
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TITLE: THE SUNKEN COUNTRY & OTHER STORIESMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Rebekah Frumkin The Sunken Country & Other Stories collects five works that place personal tales of alienation, repression, isolation, obsession, and romance and broader themes of dramatic shifts in the workings of culture and environment under a microscope and vivisect them with tools gathered from the New Weird tradition