State of the Fantastic
Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film
Published on 22. July 1992
Book
Hardback
232 pages
978-0-313-27853-2 (ISBN)
Description
This collection of twenty essays originally presented at the Eleventh International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts contains five parts: on fantasists and their work, contemporary fantastic theory and practice, studies in the British and European fantastic, studies in American fantasy and science fiction, and sex and techno-horror in fantastic literature and film.
What all the essays here have in common is that their authors are all aware of the tremendous latent power, for good and ill, of the fantastic text. We are given timely reminders of the dangers, as well as the appeal, of elves and how narrators in fantastic fictions take advantage of our desire to be part of a narrative community. We learn how some contemporary fantasists assimilate literary and scientific theory, while others seem in their fiction to require a new sociology to account for it.
What all the essays here have in common is that their authors are all aware of the tremendous latent power, for good and ill, of the fantastic text. We are given timely reminders of the dangers, as well as the appeal, of elves and how narrators in fantastic fictions take advantage of our desire to be part of a narrative community. We learn how some contemporary fantasists assimilate literary and scientific theory, while others seem in their fiction to require a new sociology to account for it.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
527 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-313-27853-2 (9780313278532)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
NICHOLAS RUDDICK is Associate Professor of English at the University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He has two books forthcoming from Greenwood Press: Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction and British Science Fiction: A Chronology.
Content
Preface Introduction: Learning to Resist the Wolf by Nicholas Ruddick A Manifesto for Fantasists Oh God, Here Come the Elves! by Jane Yolen Unreal Rhetorics: Contemporary Fantastic Theory and Practice Fantasy and the Narrative Transaction by Brian Attebery Specular SF: Postmodern Allegory by Veronica Hollinger Knowing about Knowing: Paradigms of Knowledge in the Postmodern Fantastic by Peter Malekin Im/maculate: Some Instances of Gnostic Science Fiction by Reinhold Kramer The Reproduction of the Body in Space by Elisabeth Vonarburg Recovering the Numinous: Studies in the British and European Fantastic M.G. Lewis and Later Gothic Fiction: The Numinous Dissipated by Robert F. Geary The Taming of the Screw: Rohmer's Filming of Kleist's "Die Marquise von O ... " by Mary Rhiel Alain Robbe-Grillet and the Fantastic by Tony Chadwick and Virginia Harger-Grinling Caricature, Parody, Satire: Narrative Masks as Subversion of the Picaro in Patrick Suskind's "Perfume" by Edith Borchardt From the Empire of the Senseless: Studies in American Fantasy and Science Fiction Reality, Fiction and Wu in "The Man in the High Castle" by Jianjiong Zhu Zelazny's Black: The Sidekick as Second Self by Carl B. Yoke Suicide, Murder, Culture, and Catastrophe: Joanna Russ's "We Who Are About To ... " by Patrick D. Murphy Getting a Kick out of Chaos: "Fortunate Failure" in Greg Bear's Future Histories by Len Hatfield Out of Blue Water: Dream Flight and Narrative Construction in the Novels of Toni Morrison by Grace A. Epstein Dominance and Subversion: The Horizontal Sublime and Erotic Empowerment in the Works of Kathy Acker by Greg Lewis Peters Machine Nightmares: Sex and Techno-Horror in Fantastic Literature and Film The Dawn Patrol: Sex, Technology, and Irony in Farmer and Ballard by Gary K. Wolfe The Making of Frankenstein's Monster: Post-Golem, Pre-Robot by Norma Rowen "Westworld," "Futureworld," and the World's Obscenity by J. P. Telotte The Animal at the Door: Modern Works of Horror and the Natural Animalby Marian Scholtmeijer Index