Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

by Brian Stableford, Woronoff
Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

by Brian Stableford, Woronoff

Hardcover

$151.00 
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Overview

Once upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic existed, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in Western estimation by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was temporarily marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace. Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks the evolution of fantasy from the origins of literature to the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulses creating and shaping fantasy literature, the problems of its definition and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 other entries describe the fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography that ranges from general textbooks and specialized accounts of the history and scholarship of fantasy literature, through bibliographies and accounts of the fantasy literature of different nations, to individual author studies and useful websites.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780810849440
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date: 09/29/2005
Series: Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts Series
Pages: 568
Product dimensions: 5.96(w) x 8.46(h) x 1.37(d)

About the Author

Brian Stableford is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at University College, Winchester. A professional writer since 1965, he has published more than fifty novels and two hundred short stories, several nonfiction works, and thousands of articles for periodicals and reference books.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Editor's Foreword Part 2 Acknowledgments Part 3 Acronyms and Abbreviations Part 4 Chronology Part 5 Introduction Part 6 THE DICTIONARY Part 7 Bibliography Part 8 About the Author
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