Fantasy

by Lucie Armitt, John Drakakis (Series Editor)

Fantasy provides an invaluable and accessible guide to the study of this fascinating field. Covering literature, film, television, ballet, light opera and visual art and featuring a historical overview from Ovid to the Toy Story franchise, this book takes the reader through the key landmark moments in the development of fantasy criticism. This comprehensive guide examines fantasy and politics, fantasy and the erotic, quest narratives and animal fantasy for children. The versatility and cultural significance of fantasy is explored, alongside the important role fantasy plays in our understanding of ‘the real’, from childhood onwards. Written in a clear, engaging style and featuring an extensive glossary of terms, this is the essential introduction to Fantasy.

196 pages, Paperback

Published March 24, 2020

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book lacks focus. It's not really clear what the through line is from chapter to chapter, so perhaps it would have been better to publish this as an edited volume with various authors contributing to it. The scope of media covered here is also a bit broad. In one chapter, it jumps from Game of Thrones to Tamagotchi. Also, for those who are looking for commentary on fantasy literature, be aware that this draws from all media. Strangely, though, it doesn't really cover intertextuality despite covering various forms of media.

[Charul Palmer-Patel]

While the author provides some excellent analysis, I found the scope to be too broad to be useful.
Chapter 1's literature review of fantasy definitions works great and I had mistakingly anticipated the rest of the book would take a similar approach.
Chapter 2 "A historical overview of fantasy" covers: poetry, plays, opera, ballet, musical symphonies, toys, early cinema, special effects and CGI, and hand held video games.
Chapter 3 "animal fantasy for children" focuses on varying degrees of realist presentations of animals; key texts include: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Aslan in Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Beatrix Potter's tales, Charlotte's Web, Watership Down.
Chapter 4 "Fantasy Quests" starts with early Arthurian Legends (quest for kingship and power), but then moves to such items as A Christmas Carol (quest for knowledge), Harry Potter and LOTR (quest to destroy object of power), and Ovid (monsters that get in the way)
Chapter 5 "fantasy and politics" is divided into two parts. The first part is fantasy that hasn't aged well because of changing attitudes. The key example here seems to be of Barbar the Elephant (I have to be honest. I had started skimming by this point to see if there was anything pertinent to my own research). The second part covers dystopian and utopian literature like George Orwell and Margaret Atwood (Orxy and Crake as well as Handmaid's Tale)
And then chapter 6 is on erotica and pornography which I didn't bother to flip through (I.e. didn't feel it was relevant to my work).
170 pages to cover all these disconnected topics as an introduction to fantasy. While there are some great ideas and analysis, overall, unfortunately I felt that the approach is too diffused.