The Story
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.
- Explores the long histories and deep-rooted traditions that feed into modern Fantasy, revealing how the genre knowingly engages with its pasts, caring for, critiquing and remaking older narratives
- Interdisciplinary in scope and covering a wide range of media forms, including novels, short fiction, tabletop games, video games, films, comics, TV and animation
- Radically reframes Fantasy as a community form, which draws from a shared commons and in which creators and audiences frequently switch roles and dynamically collaborate
Description
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.
- Explores the long histories and deep-rooted traditions that feed into modern Fantasy, revealing how the genre knowingly engages with its pasts, caring for, critiquing and remaking older narratives
- Interdisciplinary in scope and covering a wide range of media forms, including novels, short fiction, tabletop games, video games, films, comics, TV and animation
- Radically reframes Fantasy as a community form, which draws from a shared commons and in which creators and audiences frequently switch roles and dynamically collaborate
