Twentieth-Century Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society and Belief in Twentieth-Century Mythopoeic Literature

by Kath Filmer (Editor)

Overview

Twentieth-Century Fantasists is a collection of essays which examine the way in which fantasy literature functions as cultural and social criticism. Essays on Tolkien, Le Guin, Angela Carter, H.G. Wells and C.S. Lewis are included: and also works by William Burroughs, Ford Madox Ford, and Salman Rushdie are discussed. The book surveys the social and cultural changes of the twentieth century as reflected in the works of fantasy writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333569542
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	07/07/1992
Edition description:	1992
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

KATH FILMER teaches English at the University of Queensland. She is a Director of Writing and Editorial Services, taking workshops and seminars to readers' and writers' groups throughout Australia. She has edited The Victorian Fantasists and is author of The Fiction of C.S. Lewis: Mask and Mirror. She is a poet, publishing regularly in Poetry Monash, a journalist, and a writer of short fiction.

Table of Contents

Foreword Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; K.Filmer Science, Myth and Utopia; R.Haynes Wells, The First Men in the Moon , and Lewis's Ransom Trilogy; D.Lake Visions from the Verge: Terror and Play in G.K. Chesterton's Imagination; E.Schenkel Meaning Everything: The Image of Pan; R.Dingley The Eternal Feminine Reclaimed: Ford Madox Ford's Medieval Fantasies; V.C.Kenny Viewing 'The Immense Panorama or Futility and Anarchy that is Contemporary History' in the The First Six Novels of Charles Williams; M.McKinley Tolkien, Epic Traditions and Golden Age Myths; C.A.Huttar Atseiniau O Ddyddiau Gynt: Welsh Myth and Culture in Contemporary Fantasy; K.Filmer Wordsworth in Space: The Fantasies of William S. Burroughs; D.Wu 'Escape!': That Dirty Word in Modern Fantasy: Le Guin's Earthsea; N.Talbot 'In the Demythologising Business: Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr Hoffmann (1972); C.Manlove The Handmaid's Tale : Narrative Voice and the Primacy of the Tale; B.Garlick Hammering the Demons: Sword, Sorcery and Contemporary Society; J.Strugnell Centring the Margins: Postmodernism and Fantasy; S.Prickett Dreaming Each Other: The Discourse of Fantasy in Contemporary New Media; K.Filmer Index

Editorial Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, H. G. Wells, Ursula Le Guin, Salman Rushdie, and Madeleine L'Engle are among the authors examined in terms of their anticipation of developments and concerns of modern (or future) life, and their elements of social and cultural criticism. Among the 16 essays are treatments of postmodernism and fantasy, and of the attitude toward the genre by the news media. Filmer has also edited a collection on Victorian fantasists. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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