On Fantasy’s Transmediality: A Cognitive Approach

Reframing debates surrounding long narratives to explore their impact, this book develops a critical vocabulary for discussing the formal, social, and political affordances of length and duration in fantasy novels, and by extension, other genres. Beloved by fans, fantasy books frequently receive dismissive treatment from book reviewers and academics. For literary critics, lengthy narratives have long posed problems: for aesthetic critics, they are too sprawling and unstructured; for the politically engaged, they are suspect as part of a culture industry that commodifies texts.Reading Length in Fantasy Fictionswitches up this discussion of long narratives, exploring their use of repetitions, narrative rhythms, and complexly ramifying structures to shape readers’ perspectives on such concepts as historical causation, group inclusion, the conflict between traditional values and innovation, and human agency in relation to a complex social totality. As the first book-length study of the length of fantasy novels, this book uses insights from aesthetic theory, phenomenology, and cognitive studies to ask both “what does length do for fantasy narratives?” and also “how does fantasy length help us understand the function of extended duration in narrative?” Calling upon readings from a diverse set of writers including J. R. R. Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin, N. K. Jemisin, Marlon James, Barbara Hambly, Steven Erikson, Samuel Delany and Katharine Kerr, Matthew Oliver illustrates the breadth of approaches structuring long fiction and the impact of strategies for managing length on a range of issues including race, gender, and social class. Finally, offering a critical vocabulary for the formal analysis of length and a set of tools for relating the duration of texts to their social and political consequences, this book presents a major intervention in criticism of the fantastic.

This chapter argues that setting is a privileged aspect of the popular fantasy genre, and it analyses setting in terms of both how texts are created and how they are circulated and enjoyed. ‘Plot driven’ and ‘character driven’ are commonplace descriptions of modern fiction, and often mark a distinction between genres of differing value. While these phrases are most usually deployed in non-academic writing such as reviews and other opinion-based works, they have appeared in recent research around reading and empathy. According to Frank Lachmann, readers of so-called literary works scored higher in empathy tests than readers of popular fiction; he suggests that this is because empathy is more readily aroused by ‘character-driven’ fiction where ‘the emotional repertoire of the reader is enlarged’ than by ‘plot-driven’ fiction (2015, p. 144). I note that Lachmann makes no attempt to elaborate on what these phrases might specifically mean, nor is there any consideration of the ‘emotional repertoire’ of, say, romance fiction, which fits his definition of character driven and yet remains the most reviled of the popular genres. While, to my mind, good fiction needs to attend to both plot and character equally well, neither of these necessary aspects of storytelling comes readily to mind as a ‘driver’ when thinking about fantasy fiction. In fact, the big engine of the genre appears to be the exposition and elaboration of the setting, from which characterisation and plots specific to the setting are then generated. Fantasy novels are, in many ways, setting driven, a feature that marks them out as unique among popular genres. Other genres where setting is an acknowledged pleasure are historical fiction (for example the work of Philippa Gregory or Diana Gabaldon) and the exotic travel memoir (for example texts set in aspirational destinations such as Provence and Tuscany); but these at least rely on settings that are real. Fantasy fiction, on the other hand, invites readers to immerse themselves in and admire an incredibly detailed world that is an invention of the author’s imagination.

As an interdisciplinary project that encompasses Victorian and children's literature studies, Fantasy of Home: Victorian Children's Fantasy Fiction and the Domestic emphasizes reciprocity between Victorian domestic ideologies and the period's children's literature. The project thus rethinks divisions between children's literature scholarship and literary studies. Drawing on primary sources and the work of Victorianists such as Elizabeth Langland, historians such as Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, and children's literature scholars such as U. C. Knoepflmacher and Claudia Nelson, I show how children's novels by Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Jean Ingelow, and James Barrie negotiate the tensions among contemporary attitudes toward middle-class children, the domestic spaces they were assumed to inhabit, and the properly feminine or masculine adults they were encouraged to become. My first chapter traces the ways in which contemporary defenses of fairy tales inform Carroll's presentation of the often conflicted relationships between ideals of girlhood and womanhood, while my second chapter shows how a woman writer such as Ingelow employs associations between children's literature and maternal influence to establish her own authorial credentials. The final chapters treat MacDonald's fantasy novels and Barrie's Peter Pan as attempts to reconcile a belief in home as the child's proper sphere with the emerging late-Victorian and Edwardian emphasis on male adventure. By revealing the diverse ways in which these works shape and are shaped by contemporary views of children's literature, gender, and the domestic, I offer fresh readings of the texts at hand and augment the recent critical emphasis on multifaceted, malleable, and ideologically-charged conceptions of home and childhood in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Victorian children's fiction, far from being peripheral to study of the period's literature and culture, is in fact central to an understanding of the dialectic between representations of children, women, and home in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The following paper analyzes how fantasy literature addresses the topic of religion. The discussion of the genre’s dependence on myths, supported by Mircea Eliade’s claims about the sacred and profane spheres of human life, offers an answer to the questions why religion is one of the most prominent themes in fantasy fiction. The analysis of a selected group of fantasy novels (the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, Guy Gavriel Kay, Celia S. Friedman, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Philip Pullman, Dave Duncan, George R. R. Martin, and Brandon Sanderson) presents various ways in which a fantasy narrative may approach religious themes: by inventing secondary religions that enrich the imaginary realm, by reworking particular religious themes and turning them into an axis of the narrative, and by supporting, promoting, or criticizing a certain faith through the means of fantasy fiction.

O Laboratório Transdisciplinar de Cenografia (LTC) foi concebido e fundado na Universidade de Brasília (UnB) em 2010 pela profa. Dra. Sônia Paiva, para participar da Quadrienal de Praga de 2011 – PQ11. O LTC é um laboratório baseado em quatro pilares: Transdisciplinaridade, Diversidade, Colaboração e Economia Criativa. O conceito foi inspirado na compreensão da necessidade de romper com a estrutura disciplinar universitária, para conectar produtores, pensadores, técnicos, cientistas e artistas na realização de projetos inovadores, que possam desencadear transformações culturais, sociais, políticas e humanas. O resultado disso é um olhar colaborativo, multicultural que é compartilhado no Desenho da Cena. A curadoria da Mostra dos Estudantes Brasileiros de Desenho da Cena na Quadrienal de Praga 2015, marcou a metodologia processual do LTC. A exposição, apresentada na PQ15, condensou um trabalho colaborativo com os núcleos de ensino de cenografia brasileiros e explicitou como cada estado e escola operam seus processos criativos. Assim, nosso espaço expositivo apresentou a diversidade cultural brasileira em Praga; nos remeteu a uma cabana – que poderia estar em qualquer lugar, em um estado mutável – e nos convidou a vivenciar os espaços imaginativos de nossos estudantes, levando os visitantes a sonharem com outros territórios em uma abordagem mais atenta e participativa. Palavras-Chave Laboratório. Transdisciplinaridade. Cenografia. Quadrienal de Praga. Multiculturalismo.

The Poetics and Politics of Translation in Contemporary Drama, 1960s-1990s Avishek Ganguly This dissertation studies a group of twentieth-century plays from India, Ireland, Nigeria and Britain that have rarely been read together. Through close readings of dramatic texts by authors like Utpal Dutt, Brian Friel, David Edgar and Wole Soyinka and, I examine the significant place of translation figured as dramatic technique in contemporary drama and theatre. The dissertation, therefore, adopts a more formal rather than substantive logic of comparison. Translation, in drama and theatre studies, is usually invoked to either describe the transformation of a literary text from page to the stage, or by way of a more general understanding, as the literal transfer of plays from one language into another. I look at translation within rather than of a dramatic text. This approach allows me to address the insufficient attention that figurative uses of translation have received in drama and theatre studies, and make two critical interventions: first, to demonstrate how a dramatic technique figured in translation disrupts the assumptions of what appears to be a constitutive monolingualism in the writing and reception of drama and theatre. Since the ascendancy of performance studies in the nineteen sixties, critical work on drama and theatre has taken an anti-text, and by extension, anti-literary stance. By contrast, my reading is mindful of the performative aspect of these plays without necessarily privileging it at the expense of the literary in so far as such a distinction can be consistently sustained. The second critical intervention is to locate moments in the texts when acts of translation create new social collectivities and hence serve as a point of departure for a political reading. The emergence of social protest movements on the one hand, and the fall of communism at the end of the Cold War on the other frame the different imaginations of collectivity that I trace in these texts. The first and second waves of decolonization in Asia and Africa, and their subsequent postcolonial predicaments productively supplement this framework. My dissertation also relates to the category of translation as it organizes the prevalent concept of ‘world literature,’ which in its focus on the novel has been insufficiently attentive to drama. I trouble as well as extend the logics of classification by recontextualizing the authors beyond their dominant national-literary configurations.

Imagination and memory—The psychology of extension and retention.

Nesta nota técnica, apresentamos algumas ações desenvolvidas pela equipe do Projeto de Extensão Núcleo Maria da Penha-NUMAPE (UNICENTRO/Irati) no que diz respeito ao enfrentamento da violência doméstica. A partir de relato de experiência de ações desenvolvidas por equipe interdisciplinar composta pelas áreas do Direito e Psicologia, narramos os deslocamentos produzidos pela pandemia do COVID-19 que colocaram alguns desafios para a equipe do projeto: necessidade de realização de atendimentos remotos, foco na prevenção e auxílio para situações de caráter emergencial, tais como encaminhamento para rede de proteção e para recebimento do auxílio emergencial disponibilizado pelo governo federal. Entre os resultados , destacamos a contradição entre o possível aumento da violência doméstica em situação de distanciamento social e, por outro lado, a dificuldade de ações de enfrentamento, tais como denúncias e processo de desvinculação dos agressores.

What is, for me, distinctive about the two narratives considered in this chapter is the fact that both illuminate the profound connection between haunting, mourning, and architecture in comparable yet dissimilar ways. While The Others (2001) and The Orphanage (El Orfanato, 2007) contextualize haunting differently,1 the two films nevertheless underscore how architecture can embody perpetual mourning, thus disavowing loss and by extension, historical oblivion. Like Beloved, both films also complicate the idea of the “haunted” house by insinuating architecture as haunting and correspond with Julian Wolfreys’s view that: haunting is irreducible to the apparition. The haunting process [effects] a “gap,” a disruption that is other to the familiarity of particular structures wherein the disruption is itself structural and irreducible to a simple, stabilized representation …. The efficacy of haunting is in its resistance to being represented whole or undifferentiated, or being “seen” as itself rather than being uncannily intimated. (Wolfreys 2002: 6)

Imagine a scenario in which players engage in conversations with non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games using a microphone, free from scripted responses or predefined constraints. With the advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), this possibility has become more feasible than ever. This article examines the Mantella mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2011), which facilitates natural language interactions with NPCs, transforming player engagement within the game’s fictional universe. Skyrim is an action role-playing game (RPG) developed by Bethesda Game Studios. With over 60 million copies sold and releases spanning three generations of gaming consoles, Skyrim has cemented its place in gaming history. A significant factor contributing to its enduring relevance is its vibrant modding community, which has enabled players to modify and expand the game in myriad ways – ranging from graphical enhancements to the introduction of new areas and survival mechanics. This extensive capacity for customization has sustained the game’s popularity for over a decade since its initial release. The primary objective of this article is to investigate the creative appropriation of GAI by Skyrim's PC modding community. Specifically, it addresses the following question: What AI imaginaries emerge from Skyrim gameplay influenced by the Mantella mod? To explore this question, 13 YouTube videos were collected using ethnographic techniques, complemented by a formal gameplay analysis.

The thesis titled as ‘About the Narrative Space and Spatial Narrative in Lou, Yi-chun’s “Xi-Xia Hotel”’. Narratology, Heidegger-Gadamer’s ontology and hermeneutics are applied in practice, focusing on Lou, Yi-chun’s “Xi-Xia Hotel” as the main research topic. To discuss more aspects of Lou, Yi-chun and his novel researches, author tried to return to essence of literature research from the narrative space and the spatial narrative. Author discussed the narrative techniques of Lou, Yi-chun (e.g., structure types of complex, spatial form in modern literature, narrator and so on.) from literature forms (the narrative space). Afterwards, literature content is discussed by analyzing the spatial images in “Xi-Xia Hotel”. It is found that the flow of time is not mechanical, fixed moving forward. Instead, the flow is displayed like still, disturbed, inverted and randomly accessed. Among the spatial images, the images of “dream space” and “story space” are the most representative for the two images both display the property of “the spatialization of time”. The purpose of “the spatialization of time” is to find the first moment of hurts which is the common expression of all spatial images of “Xi-Xia Hotel”. Self-will spirit, imagination of story and the memory of the past are kept in non-existent “Xi-Xia Hotel” in narrating subject. Time here is not objectively exists, but the subjective mind. It opens up an enlarged space for narrative to reflect and view it. Therefore, thinking about the past and understanding how the critical moment of things changed influences the development of the whole thing. It allows us to force to watch the damage in the past and attempt to find what had been shaped quietly in the beginning of the hurts happened.

The purpose of this thesis is the modification of the direction of self-creation, and it is an attempt to reflect the realistic condition of life through a certain form, and the expression of personal life experience. However, even though the “To See is not to Believe” series pertains to that which is invisible, the artist needs to make it perceptible to the audience and that often puts the writer in a dilemma. By establishing dialectic based on the movement cues of senses and imagination, leading to the research, I earnestly hope to find a language of creation that is suitable for me in order to find new possibilities in my personal artistic form. I also intent to blend artistic creation with everyday living, and capture the unseen imagination in everyday living through the process of artistic creation, subsequently discovering the inner depth lying in the foundation of everyday living, and going further in my creative career through it. With regard to the significance of the title “To See is not to Believe – Traversing, Transposing, Transitional State”, “to see is not to believe” suggests that the truth is not just what the eyes see; beyond the surface is another truth. “Traversing” and “Transposing” are the expressed abilities of the imagination and naked eye, i.e. the truth that the senses understand is the ability of the naked eye and the truth of the mind is the ability of the imagination. On the other hand, “Transitional State” refers to an area of uncertainty between the naked eye and the imagination when transitioning to and from reality and the mind. Thus, when ocular ability is unable to achieve the state of “seeing is believing”, it is hoped that the mental ability will allow one to see beyond the visible and feel beyond the tangible, to experience everyday living and feel life, and illuminating it through a creative form. The first chapter of this discourse is “Introduction”. It covers background and upbringing, creative motive, research purpose and research method, which involves theoretical research, and reading about artists and their creative process. The second chapter “To See is not to Believe – Traversing, Transposing, Transitional State” focuses more on describing the meaning and creative content of the works. The third chapter “Analysis of Creative Form” and the fourth chapter “Analysis of Creative Works” are explanation of my works done in graduate school, including the era in which the works were created, materials used, dimensions and narration of creative thinking. Keywords: To see is not to believe, traversing, transposing, state of transition Due to the translation from Chinese version, it is difficult to match the keywords in words instead of phrases.

The study discusses the textual rhetoric of narrative discourse in Indonesian language, especially those of short stories. It deals with the principles of textual rhetoric covering the processibility, clarity, economy, and expressiveness. In accordance with the four principles in narrative discourse Indonesian of language, can be clarified by the following explanations.The narrative discourse in Indonesian language might have either straight or flashback plot, depending on the authors’ strategy to attract their readers’ interest. The narrative discourse of Indonesian language uses the sentences intended to prevent it from being equivocal. The narrative discourse of Indonesian language is presented briefly without derogating or reducing the message, that is, by deleting, referring, and shortening. The narrative discourse in Indonesian language is constructed in harmony with messages intended for communication using imaginative and metaphorical aspects.

Reading enhances our imagination, our narrating and listening skills, our capacity to deal with time and space, thus enlightening our ethical self-awareness as human beings. The key to know how to deal with theoretical principles and practical cases lies in hermeneutics, since a demanding ethical position requires a demanding hermeneutical procedure. Based on the novel The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult, this essay aims at stressing the role of literary narratives in the field of Bioethics if one wants to focus on the right questions instead of searching for the one correct answer. The reading of this novel reminds us of the importance of telling one’s story in order to perceive our own identity, in order to deal with the pain of remembering and so that we may be able to forgive and to promise. The Storyteller , a story built of storie s by different voices, focuses our attention on the work of memory and narrative, reminding us of the thought provoking book by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition , and allowing us to bring in Paul Ricouer’s theory of the identity in Soi-Meme comme un Autre , as well as The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur W. Frank.The intersubjective dimension of therapeuticrelationships and the relevance of narrative knowledge in health care recognized by Narrative Medicine demand from the health professionals the development of the skills of a storyteller and those of a story listener/reader. Reading The Storyteller makes us face the pillars of Narrative Medicine without focusing on health issues, by making us instead read about storytellers while we are asked to be story-listeners and story-builders.

This interdisciplinary and autoethnographic PhD by creative project examines the experience of halted suicide on the part of the researcher, an “invisible woman” raised to set aside her wants to satisfy others’ needs. The inquiry examines the researcher’s engagement with artmaking in order to manage her ongoing suicidality and analyses some of her resulting artworks, which might be described as examples of “Outsider art”. Drawing on perspectives from philosophy, theology, psychology, art therapy and the interdisciplinary field of narrative studies, the project identifies three key factors pertinent to the researcher’s experience of halted suicide and subsequently managing suicidality. The first is the role of spirituality and the experience of epiphany or “prophetic call”. The second is a “narrative of the imagined future”. This refers to the need for people experiencing suicidality to make use of the imaginative resources generated by their depression to create a new story about their future self and life. The third factor is “radical courage”, a term adapted from the philosopher Jonathan Lear’s notion of “radical hope”. This refers to a steadfast, resolute determination to choose life over death, and to move towards the realisation of an alternative future in concrete, moment-by-moment ways. Art-making services a number of roles in this doctoral project. In the first place, the researcher uses a series of artworks as autoethnographic sources. These chiefly take the form of watercolours and collages, most produced in visual diaries with the aim of recording states of mind and being over time. Those works produced before the doctoral project began have been subjected to close analysis in order to provide details of the researcher’s subjective experience, and thus evidence of her autoethnographic findings. The researcher has also produced a body of work during this project as a form of autoethnographic inquiry in its own right. In this case, she has consciously explored concepts in visual form and subjected the resulting images to techniques of visual analysis with the aim of deepening her autoethnographic insights. In addition, to this art-making, the researcher has produced a body of paintings exhibited to the public. The purpose here has been to communicate her findings in visual form, supplementing and providing an alternative to the discussion in this thesis. The exhibited paintings also provide a reflexive demonstration of the process of imagining a new, future-oriented self-narrative and then exercising the courage required to bring it into life whilst also explaining how the three key factors mentioned above are layered together in the works. The value of this doctoral project lies firstly in demonstrating the value of first-person and autoethnographic accounts for understanding suicidality, particularly those from “invisible women” whose perspectives remain under-represented in sociological and psychological literature. The project draws attention to another under-researched topic: the relationship between spirituality and the ability to halt a suicide. The project emphasises the power of imagining a new future-oriented self-narrative, and the courageous process involved in bringing that imagined narrative into being through small, incremental actions in the present. Art-making practices are also explored, particularly those by people with no formal art training who produce “Outsider art”. Finally, in using artwork and techniques of visual analysis in multiple ways, the project has value for those interested in the multi-faceted and unconventional methods associated with art-based ethnographic inquiry.