A vibrant introduction to Fantasy that explores its uses, processes, traditions, manifestations across media, stakeholders and communities.

Matthew Sangster (Author)

9781009429948, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 September 2023

260 pages
27 x 18 x 1.7 cm, 0.442 kg

'An insightful and engaging exploration into the broad landscape of fantasy. Brilliantly written and comprehensive, Sangster delves deftly into the signal importance of the genre throughout human history and in our fraught contemporary moment. Thought-provoking and timely, this volume belongs on every fantasist's bookshelf.' Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Associate Professor, Joint Program in English and Education, University of Michigan, author of The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games

Providing an engaging and accessible introduction to the Fantasy genre in literature, media and culture, this incisive volume explores why Fantasy matters in the context of its unique affordances, its disparate pasts and its extraordinary current flourishing. It pays especial attention to Fantasy's engagements with histories and traditions, its manifestations across media and its dynamic communities. Matthew Sangster covers works ancient and modern; well-known and obscure; and ranging in scale from brief poems and stories to sprawling transmedia franchises. Chapters explore the roles Fantasy plays in negotiating the beliefs we live by; the iterative processes through which fantasies build, develop and question; the root traditions that inform and underpin modern Fantasy; how Fantasy interrogates the preconceptions of realism and Enlightenment totalisations; the practices, politics and aesthetics of world-building; and the importance of Fantasy communities for maintaining the field as a diverse and ever-changing commons.

Introduction
1. Fantasy, Language and the Shaping of Culture
2. The Value of Iteration
3. Root Formations
4. Enlightenment and its Shadows
5. Fashioning Worlds
6. Fantastic Communities and Common Ground
Envoi.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]