Revisiting Imaginary Worlds

by Mark J.P. Wolf (Editor)

The concept of world and the practice of world creation have been with us since antiquity, but they are now achieving unequalled prominence. In this timely anthology of subcreation studies, an international roster of contributors come together to examine the rise and structure of worlds, the practice of world-building, and the audience's reception of imaginary worlds. Including essays written by world-builders A.K. Dewdney and Alex McDowell and offering critical analyses of popular worlds such as those of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Minecraft, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the issues and concepts involved in imaginary worlds across media platforms.

406 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2016

About the author

Mark J. P. Wolf is Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University Wisconsin.

Reviews

[Andrew Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Mark J.P. Wolf’s 2012 monograph Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (Routledge) was for me, and many others, a revelatory text as it dealt with how imaginary worlds are created in fiction; focusing on the trans-medial elements, in addition to the core narrative, that go into building secondary-worlds. Now Wolf has followed up his brilliant work on the theory behind world-building by bring together a group of leading scholars to explore various elements of world-building in fictional texts as well as physical and virtual environments. Wolf very helpfully divides these papers up into key sections. In 'Worlds on the Rise' three scholars examine different aspects of world-building. Dr. Dimitra Fimi's brilliant paper 'The Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of Medievalism' cogently explores three different author’s - Thomas Chatterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Umberto Eco - work on inventing an imagined world aimed at representing a medieval past. Fimi puts in-depth focus on the actual process each of these authors used in inventing their versions of medievalism through their making of actual artefacts (forged and feigned documents) as well as constructing narrative transmission schemes to ground these worlds in a sense of reality. Fimi’s re-contextualisation of what has been considered the forgeries of an author like Thomas Chatterton as actually an inventive act of world-building is sure to open up new vistas of exploration around these and related texts. The section called 'Structure' offers a good set of papers exploring the actual mechanics of secondary worlds; ranging from Tolkien's world-building work to that of the role of religion as a world-building element in the television texts Battlestar Galactica and (the short-lived) Caprica as well as the transformational world-building and user reception of Minecraft. In the ‘Practice’ section there are several papers on specific fictional world-building. For me, the two papers on the American fantasy author Frank L. Baum really stood out here. Michael O Riley suggests one of the key sources of Baum's well-known Oz series of books is actually another work Baum wrote in the same year he wrote his most famous book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) called A New Wonderland which was overshadowed by the success of the first Oz book. A New Wonderland is a collection of stories that are set in the magical land of Phunnyland. Riley cogent exploration of this ‘lost’ text demonstrates that Baum would use several key elements of Phunnyland in his later Oz books (which itself grew in the series from being a portal world into a fully immersive secondary world) and also explores how prolific a world-builder Baum was outside of just his more well known Oz series. Henry Jenkins provides a good counter-point to Riley’s paper by exploring how the Baum’s Oz mythos was adapted in the recent film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) which suggested a backstory to the origin of the Wizard by drawing upon elements of not only Baum’s original work put also key adaptations such as the famous MGM Musical The Wizard of Oz and the more recent stage musical Wicked. The series of papers on 'Reception' show how world-building for fiction can be expanded through what Henry Jenkins has called 'multi-media layering.' A good example is the extension of a fictional world coming from film or television through novelizations. William Proctor and Mathew Freeman's paper examines the very recent debate in the Star Wars mythos of what in the many novelizations of the original films is considered ‘canon’ to Lucas’ original world-building and what is now what Disney has been deemed ‘legendary’ as it no longer fits the diegetic braiding of the ‘official’ world-building of the Star Wars mythos. Gerald Hynes masterfully explores the role of language in the world-building of China Mieville’s Embassytown showing how the world-building element of language, either actually shown (as in Tolkien’s great work) or just described, has the power to shape conceptual domains and ground a secondary-world in a great sense of reality. After offering these brilliant papers this volume ends with a paper by Wolf himself suggesting a canon of Imaginary Worlds ranging from Kallipolis in Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BC) to the Utopia of Thomas More (1516 – the first fictional text to include elements of invented language and a map!) up to Wonderland, Flatland, Oz and of course Tolkien’s Arda – and beyond. One could just revel (and in these scary times in the primary world) escape into these worlds – and thanks to the continued work of Wolf (his bio shows more work on world-building is coming from him!) and the scholars who have contributed to this volume we now have a better understanding and exploration of how these worlds are built, grow, are received and thrive in our multi-media and multi-layered culture. I highly recommend this book and look forward to many more explorations.