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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.
Introduction; 1. Fantasy, Language and the Shaping of Culture; 2. The Value of Iteration; 3. Root Formations; 4. Enlightenment and its Shadows; 5. Fashioning Worlds; 6. Fantastic Communities and Common Ground; Envoi.
A vibrant introduction to Fantasy that explores its uses, processes, traditions, manifestations across media, stakeholders and communities.
Matthew Sangster is Professor of Romantic Studies, Fantasy and Cultural History at the University of Glasgow, where he co-directs the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. His other books include Living as an Author in the Romantic Period (2021), Institutions of Literature, 1700-1900 (co-edited with Jon Mee, 2022) and Remediating the 1820s (co-edited with Jon Mee, 2023).
'Matthew Sangster offers us an entirely new way to look at fantasy
and its cultural significance. Drawing on a wide range of examples,
from 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' to Dungeons and Dragons, and
gracefully integrating ideas from a number of disciplines, Sangster
offers a convincing account of one of the major cultural phenomena
of the past century and a half.' Brian Attebery, Emeritus Professor
of English, Idaho State University
'On all accounts, this is a wonderful book. The range of texts
considered is amazing. Sangster examines written narratives, films,
TV series, fan fiction, graphic narratives, comics, role-playing
games, and other web manifestations of fantasy, and invokes Asian,
African, and Near Eastern examples alongside Western ones. The
teeming variety, and Sangster's own uniquely positive approach,
support claims to the importance of fantasy in human experience and
enforce the sense that collaboration and shared experience is an
integral element of human interaction, and one that fantasy
encourages.' Kathryn Hume, Emerita Edwin Erle Sparks Professor
of English, The Pennsylvania State University
'Matthew Sangster's modestly titled An Introduction to
Fantasy is much more than an introduction to a single
genre. It is a powerful meditation on a communal mode of
artistic creativity that has shaped culture for thousands of years
and now finds expression in textual, visual and interactive
forms all across the world.' Anna Vaninskaya, Senior Lecturer
in English Literature, University of Edinburgh
'Although it's one of the oldest modes of storytelling, fantasy has
exploded in popularity over the last half-century, and critical and
historical commentary about it has expanded almost as dramatically.
In An Introduction to Fantasy: Imagination, Iteration and
Community, Matthew Sangster demonstrates a keen understanding
both of the source material—drawing not only on literature but on
films, TV, gaming, and art—and of the critical discourse around it.
His eminently readable study is both historically grounded as far
back as Plato, and as contemporary as Kelly Link and Nghi Vo.' Gary
K. Wolfe, Emeritus Professor of Humanities, Roosevelt
University
'An insightful and engaging exploration into the broad landscape of
fantasy. Brilliantly written and comprehensive, Sangster delves
deftly into the signal importance of the genre throughout human
history and in our fraught contemporary moment. Thought-provoking
and timely, this volume belongs on every fantasist's
bookshelf.' Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor, Joint
Program in English and Education, University of Michigan, author of
The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to
The Hunger Games
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