Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth PDF Download

Author: William Gray
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This study explores how the 'high fantasy' tradition, from German Romantic writers to Philip Pullman, has transposed spiritual and moral values, once the prerogative of organised religion, into new myths.

Author: James W Menzies
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 071884341X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
True Myth examines the meaning and significance of myth as understood by C.S. Lewis and Joseph Campbell and its place in the Christian faith in a technological society. C.S. Lewis defined Christianity, and being truly human, as a relationship between thepersonal Creator and his creation mediated through faith in his son, Jesus. The influential writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell had a different perspective, understanding Christianity as composed of mythical themes similar to those in other religious and secular myths. While accepting certain portions of the biblical record as historical, Campbell taught the theological and miraculous aspects as symbolic - as stories in which the reader discovers what it means to be human today. In contrast, Lewis presented the theological and the miraculous in a literal way. Although Lewis understood how one could see symbolism and lessons for life in miraculous events, he believed they were more than symbolic and indeed took place in human history. In True Myth, James W. Menzies skilfully balances the two writers' differing approaches to guide the reader through a complex interaction of myth with philosophy, media, ethics, history, literature, art, music and religion in a contemporary world.

Author: William Gray
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144383050X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
In part a sequel to his earlier Death and Fantasy, William Gray’s Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers examines the ways in which “Life” in its various senses is affirmed, explored and enhanced through the work of the creative imagination, especially in fantasy literature. The discussion includes a range of fantasy writers, but focuses chiefly on two writers of the Victorian period, George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Scottish (and particularly Calvinist) backgrounds deeply affected their engagement with what MacDonald called “The Fantastic Imagination.”

Author: William Gray
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443808970
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Drawing on philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis as well as on literary criticism, this collection of essays explores a range of fantasy texts with particular attention to the various ways in which they seek to deal with the reality of death. The essays uncover some fascinating links, and indeed tensions, between the writers discussed.

Author: Holly Blackford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113664427X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In this book, Blackford historicizes the appeal of the Persephone myth in the nineteenth century and traces figurations of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades throughout girls’ literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illuminates developmental patterns and anxieties in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. The story of the young goddess’s separation from her mother and abduction into the underworld is, at root, an expression of ambivalence about female development, expressed in the various Neverlands through which female protagonists cycle and negotiate a partial return to earth. The myth conveys the role of female development in the perpetuation and renewal of humankind, coordinating natural and cultural orders through a hieros gamos (fertility coupling) rite. Meanwhile, popular novels such as Twilight and Coraline are paradoxically fresh because they recycle goddesses from myths as old as the seasons. With this book, Blackford offers a consideration of how literature for the young squares with broader canons, how classics flexibly and uniquely speak through novels that enjoy broad appeal, and how female traditions are embedded in novels by both men and women.

Author: John H. McClendon III
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498585361
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal constitutes a philosophical inquiry on Black Theology and its attendant Black Christology. Explicitly, the philosophical examination of Black Theology conceptually maps its quest for establishing Black Christology as an authentic form within Christian theology. This text critically expounds on the methodologies and arguments, which guide how Black Theology specifically affirms Black Christology as the definitive paradigm for authentic Christianity. Significantly, the racialized character of Black Theology immediately sets this discourse within the context of philosophy of race. Clearly, the philosophy of race in terms of its substance and scope is continually expanding. Notably, the philosophy of religion in its conceptual association with the African American experience considerably enriches the content of the philosophy of race. Therefore, Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal stands as a unique contribution to philosophy of race. Summarily, while this book tackles the formidable problem of Christian theological subject matter, nonetheless, the reader must be aware that this is not a work executed methodologically in any theological manner, inclusive of Christian theology. Subsequently, while the object of our investigation substantively remains theological in character, the method of investigation is guided by philosophical inquiry, which is based on secular principles. Furthermore, although, most mainstream works in philosophy of religion, along with theology neglect to exam African American theologians and philosophers, the subject matter of Black Christology substantially facilitates in filling this intellectual void.

Author: Michael Levy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316483134
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Fantasy has been an important and much-loved part of children's literature for hundreds of years, yet relatively little has been written about it. Children's Fantasy Literature traces the development of the tradition of the children's fantastic - fictions specifically written for children and fictions appropriated by them - from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, examining the work of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, C. S. Lewis, Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling and others from across the English-speaking world. The volume considers changing views on both the nature of the child and on the appropriateness of fantasy for the child reader, the role of children's fantasy literature in helping to develop the imagination, and its complex interactions with issues of class, politics and gender. The text analyses hundreds of works of fiction, placing each in its appropriate context within the tradition of fantasy literature.

Author: Suzanne Bray
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443845574
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Although certain aspects of C.S. Lewis’s work have been studied in great detail, others have been comparatively neglected. This collection of essays looks at Lewis’s life and work, and those of his friends and associates, from many different angles, but all connected through a common theme of identity. Questions of identity are essential to the understanding of any writer. The ways authors perceive themselves and who they are, the communities they belong to by birth or choice, inevitably influence their work. The way they present other people, real or fictional, are also rooted in their own conception of identity. In this volume, scholars from several countries examine gender and family roles; national, regional, racial and professional identities; membership of a particular church; ideological attachments and personal descriptions, either with regard to Lewis and those who knew him and influenced him, or in a study of their writings. Authors studied here include J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, George MacDonald and T.S. Eliot.

Author: Peter Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137264012
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
J.R.R. Tolkien is arguably the most influential and popular of all fantasy writers. Although his position and status have long been controversial, his popularity has not faded. His best-loved works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have sold millions of copies around the world and continue to enthral readers young and old. This lively collection of original essays examines The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the light of children's literature theory and approaches, as well as from adult and fantasy literature perspectives. Exploring issues such as gender, language, worldbuilding, and ecocriticism, the volume also places Tolkien's works in the context of a range of visual media, including Peter Jackson's film adaptations.

Author: Brett M. Rogers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190661070
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy is the first collection of essays in English focusing on how fantasy draws deeply on ancient Greek and Roman mythology, philosophy, literature, history, art, and cult practice. Presenting fifteen all-new essays intended for both scholars and other readers of fantasy, this volume explores many of the most significant examples of the modern genre-including the works of H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, and more-in relation to important ancient texts such as Aeschylus' Oresteia, Aristotle's Poetics, Virgil's Aeneid, and Apuleius' The Golden Ass. These varied studies raise fascinating questions about genre, literary and artistic histories, and the suspension of disbelief required not only of readers of fantasy but also of students of antiquity. Ranging from harpies to hobbits, from Cyclopes to Cthulhu, and all manner of monster and myth in-between, this comparative study of Classics and fantasy reveals deep similarities between ancient and modern ways of imagining the world. Although antiquity and the present day differ in many ways, at its base, ancient literature resonates deeply with modern fantasy's image of worlds in flux and bodies in motion.