One of the most popular fantasy authors today, Neil Gaiman has been notorious for representing ch... more One of the most popular fantasy authors today, Neil Gaiman has been notorious for representing children’s ambivalent perceptions of parents and creating stories based on a child’s fantasies of replacing parents with better or kinder ones. This essay offers a reading of The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish (1998/2004), Coraline (2002), and The Graveyard Book (2008) as narratives in which this desire is sublimated, allowing the young reader to vicariously experience the empowerment and the danger that accrue from replacing, getting rid of, or exchanging one’s parents. I demonstrate that in each of the three books Gaiman confirms the child’s perception of parents as potentially replaceable, but suggests that this awareness serves a vital developmental purpose. First, it helps the child protagonist outgrow dependence on the parents and, often in rebellion to them, begin to move toward emotional and psychological independence. Second, it leaves the protagonists with a more mature un...
Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film, 2021
In this chapter, Ransom Riggs’ time-slip fantasy series is read as a performance of second-genera... more In this chapter, Ransom Riggs’ time-slip fantasy series is read as a performance of second-generation memory in which the protagonist’s slipping back in time operates as a fantastic projection of intergenerational solidarity with his grandfather’s experience during World War II. Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory is invoked to explore the refractive relationship Riggs’s narrative posits between an imagined genocide of an imagined minority that lies at the heart of the series and a historical genocide such as the Holocaust that provides its conceptual reference point. The argument is that within the framework of multidirectional memory, representations of genocide in fantasy offer valid tools to contemplate genocide as a historic and situated process. Experiencing genocide through fantasy is transformative because accessing others’ pain is always an imaginative experience and because empathy is a facet of imagination too.
The chapter offers a detailed historic, generic, and thematic overview of fairy-tale cinematograp... more The chapter offers a detailed historic, generic, and thematic overview of fairy-tale cinematography in Poland, arguing that fairy-tale films and TV series make up a substantial portion of the national film production for children and adults. Adaptations of fairy tales and original fairy tale films are discussed in two sections: 1) cartoons, short animated films, and animated feature films, and 2) live-action feature films and TV series. Despite its long tradition, originality, and diversity, the fairy-tale film has not been identified as a distinct genre in Polish cinematography. The chapter makes a strong case for this belated and much-needed recognition.
If the twentieth century witnessed a "rehabilitation of myth" in literary studies, the ... more If the twentieth century witnessed a "rehabilitation of myth" in literary studies, the upsurge of interest in mythic systems with their ideologies, worldviews, and functional modes is rightly attributed to the work of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, Northrop Frye, and Joseph Campbell. Behind their thousand faces, those thinkers argued, myths carry one message, which reflects the psychic unity of humankind. And because we are becoming more conscious of this unity, we face the need to "tell ourselves" anew and imagine a new mythology apposite to the modern situation. In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Joseph Campbell presents this new mythology as one of the whole human race; saying it is relevant to our present knowledge, already implicit among humans as intuitive knowledge, and will be realized in and through art. These postulates are met in and chronologically overlap with the emergence of modern mythopoeic fantasy in Tolkien, Lewis, L'Engle, Le Guin, Alexander...
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Sep 22, 2007
Ever since madeleine lengle admitted that "[her] fantasies are [her] theology," critics... more Ever since madeleine lengle admitted that "[her] fantasies are [her] theology," critics have explored the implications of this statement (Forbes 17). In most cases, however, they have seen it merely as a general acknowledgment of L'Engle's Christian worldview, which affirms transcendence and sees the universe as an arena of an eternal battle between the forces of good and evil. This interpretation is viable but incomplete. On the one hand, it downplays a deeper narrative-theological endeavor which lies behind L'Engle's Time Quartet; on the other, it ignores her specific situatedness as a pioneering American woman mythopoeic fantasist of the turbulent sixties. Although these "personal" and "cultural" facets of L'Engle's writing overlap and ultimately converge, I think that underlying the Quartet is a recognizable two-voicedness. In one capacity L'Engle speaks as a modern Christian universalist who struggles, through story, toward a theology which would not be "an offence to [her] instincts and to [her] mind" (Wintle 254); in another she expresses the modern American woman's concern with how technology and science, if misused, may jeopardize the humanness of humanity, if not the survival of the human race. My focus in this paper is the interplay of these two discourses seen particularly in L'Engle's attempt to integrate the claims of modern science with the insights of the Christian spiritual tradition she identifies with. What L'Engle seeks to find is a response to the tremendous challenges facing humanity--and Christianity--in the increasingly technology-permeated world. Although she does so in a way that speaks particularly to American realities of the post-Cold War period, the issues she raises--the search for a form of spirituality (or universalist Christianity) fully relevant to modern life and the quest for principles which may help humans learn to use science and technology to eliminate rather than aggravate economic exploitation and ecological damage--have not been solved yet. On the contrary, since 1962 when A Wrinkle was published, they have become even more urgent. And it is this urgency that may explain, at least in part, the Quartet's lasting popularity. (1) I believe there are strong reasons to classify the Time Quartet as mythopoeic fantasy, a genre in which the existence of the supernatural is assumed with all seriousness and whose stories provide an imaginative experience of a world in which metaphysical concepts are objective realities. The name mythopoeic fantasy was first used in relation to L'Engle's works in Diana Waggoner's 1978 The Hills of Faraway, and then I adapted it in my 2005 "Prolegomena to Mythopoeic Fantasy." Although this classification is by no means absolute, I think that in view of the generic confusion about L'Engle's Time series it is as legitimate as others (2); in my opinion it seems, in fact, perhaps the best generic tag to characterize L'Engle's thematic proclivities, her attitude to the subject matter, the moral thrust of the narrative, and her strong affinities with the tradition of Christian mythopoeia. Indeed, although the critical assessment of L'Engle's writings is not large, most sources identify L'Engle as a Christian mythmaker and mythopoeic storyteller for whom the fantasy form is, in the words of Martha Sammons, "the 'fictive analogue' for [her] Christian world view" and a way of presenting "as real and credible the supernatural world outside our perception" (2). L'Engle's work also fully qualifies as an example of the genre that Colin Manlove in his 1992 Christian Fantasy from 1200 to the Present defines as Christian fantasy, and in his 1999 The Fantasy Literature of England--following on Brian Attebery's "fuzzy set" concept--subsumes under a larger category of metaphysical fantasy: "a fictional effort to preserve the metaphysical view of life in a world where belief in it is fading" (England 4). Although I think Manlove's perspective is a bit skewed in his persistent insistence that "Christian fantasy seems a dying form [. …
International Research in Children's Literature, 2010
This essay examines the cultural maps of Eastern European nations drawn by Philip Pullman in His ... more This essay examines the cultural maps of Eastern European nations drawn by Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials trilogy, Jonathan Stroud in The Bartimaeus Trilogy and J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series. I argue that each of those authors, in subtle and unintentional ways, perpetuates Western politico-cultural superiority in regard to Eastern Europeans. One reason for this may be that Pullman, Stroud and Rowling share a specifically British cultural attitude of regarding the continent as alien and incomprehensible. This perspective is part of a fuzzy cluster of notions, seemingly widespread across Europe, which comprise what Lawrence J. Sharpe calls ‘an East-West continuum of cultural one-upmanship’ (309). As the most westerly people on this continuum, so the explanation goes, the British tend to look down on everyone else to the East. My focus in this article is on how these attitudes are communicated in some of the most internationally popular British fantasy series of the re...
One of the most popular fantasy authors today, Neil Gaiman has been notorious for representing ch... more One of the most popular fantasy authors today, Neil Gaiman has been notorious for representing children’s ambivalent perceptions of parents and creating stories based on a child’s fantasies of replacing parents with better or kinder ones. This essay offers a reading of The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish (1998/2004), Coraline (2002), and The Graveyard Book (2008) as narratives in which this desire is sublimated, allowing the young reader to vicariously experience the empowerment and the danger that accrue from replacing, getting rid of, or exchanging one’s parents. I demonstrate that in each of the three books Gaiman confirms the child’s perception of parents as potentially replaceable, but suggests that this awareness serves a vital developmental purpose. First, it helps the child protagonist outgrow dependence on the parents and, often in rebellion to them, begin to move toward emotional and psychological independence. Second, it leaves the protagonists with a more mature un...
Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film, 2021
In this chapter, Ransom Riggs’ time-slip fantasy series is read as a performance of second-genera... more In this chapter, Ransom Riggs’ time-slip fantasy series is read as a performance of second-generation memory in which the protagonist’s slipping back in time operates as a fantastic projection of intergenerational solidarity with his grandfather’s experience during World War II. Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory is invoked to explore the refractive relationship Riggs’s narrative posits between an imagined genocide of an imagined minority that lies at the heart of the series and a historical genocide such as the Holocaust that provides its conceptual reference point. The argument is that within the framework of multidirectional memory, representations of genocide in fantasy offer valid tools to contemplate genocide as a historic and situated process. Experiencing genocide through fantasy is transformative because accessing others’ pain is always an imaginative experience and because empathy is a facet of imagination too.
The chapter offers a detailed historic, generic, and thematic overview of fairy-tale cinematograp... more The chapter offers a detailed historic, generic, and thematic overview of fairy-tale cinematography in Poland, arguing that fairy-tale films and TV series make up a substantial portion of the national film production for children and adults. Adaptations of fairy tales and original fairy tale films are discussed in two sections: 1) cartoons, short animated films, and animated feature films, and 2) live-action feature films and TV series. Despite its long tradition, originality, and diversity, the fairy-tale film has not been identified as a distinct genre in Polish cinematography. The chapter makes a strong case for this belated and much-needed recognition.
If the twentieth century witnessed a "rehabilitation of myth" in literary studies, the ... more If the twentieth century witnessed a "rehabilitation of myth" in literary studies, the upsurge of interest in mythic systems with their ideologies, worldviews, and functional modes is rightly attributed to the work of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, Northrop Frye, and Joseph Campbell. Behind their thousand faces, those thinkers argued, myths carry one message, which reflects the psychic unity of humankind. And because we are becoming more conscious of this unity, we face the need to "tell ourselves" anew and imagine a new mythology apposite to the modern situation. In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Joseph Campbell presents this new mythology as one of the whole human race; saying it is relevant to our present knowledge, already implicit among humans as intuitive knowledge, and will be realized in and through art. These postulates are met in and chronologically overlap with the emergence of modern mythopoeic fantasy in Tolkien, Lewis, L'Engle, Le Guin, Alexander...
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Sep 22, 2007
Ever since madeleine lengle admitted that "[her] fantasies are [her] theology," critics... more Ever since madeleine lengle admitted that "[her] fantasies are [her] theology," critics have explored the implications of this statement (Forbes 17). In most cases, however, they have seen it merely as a general acknowledgment of L'Engle's Christian worldview, which affirms transcendence and sees the universe as an arena of an eternal battle between the forces of good and evil. This interpretation is viable but incomplete. On the one hand, it downplays a deeper narrative-theological endeavor which lies behind L'Engle's Time Quartet; on the other, it ignores her specific situatedness as a pioneering American woman mythopoeic fantasist of the turbulent sixties. Although these "personal" and "cultural" facets of L'Engle's writing overlap and ultimately converge, I think that underlying the Quartet is a recognizable two-voicedness. In one capacity L'Engle speaks as a modern Christian universalist who struggles, through story, toward a theology which would not be "an offence to [her] instincts and to [her] mind" (Wintle 254); in another she expresses the modern American woman's concern with how technology and science, if misused, may jeopardize the humanness of humanity, if not the survival of the human race. My focus in this paper is the interplay of these two discourses seen particularly in L'Engle's attempt to integrate the claims of modern science with the insights of the Christian spiritual tradition she identifies with. What L'Engle seeks to find is a response to the tremendous challenges facing humanity--and Christianity--in the increasingly technology-permeated world. Although she does so in a way that speaks particularly to American realities of the post-Cold War period, the issues she raises--the search for a form of spirituality (or universalist Christianity) fully relevant to modern life and the quest for principles which may help humans learn to use science and technology to eliminate rather than aggravate economic exploitation and ecological damage--have not been solved yet. On the contrary, since 1962 when A Wrinkle was published, they have become even more urgent. And it is this urgency that may explain, at least in part, the Quartet's lasting popularity. (1) I believe there are strong reasons to classify the Time Quartet as mythopoeic fantasy, a genre in which the existence of the supernatural is assumed with all seriousness and whose stories provide an imaginative experience of a world in which metaphysical concepts are objective realities. The name mythopoeic fantasy was first used in relation to L'Engle's works in Diana Waggoner's 1978 The Hills of Faraway, and then I adapted it in my 2005 "Prolegomena to Mythopoeic Fantasy." Although this classification is by no means absolute, I think that in view of the generic confusion about L'Engle's Time series it is as legitimate as others (2); in my opinion it seems, in fact, perhaps the best generic tag to characterize L'Engle's thematic proclivities, her attitude to the subject matter, the moral thrust of the narrative, and her strong affinities with the tradition of Christian mythopoeia. Indeed, although the critical assessment of L'Engle's writings is not large, most sources identify L'Engle as a Christian mythmaker and mythopoeic storyteller for whom the fantasy form is, in the words of Martha Sammons, "the 'fictive analogue' for [her] Christian world view" and a way of presenting "as real and credible the supernatural world outside our perception" (2). L'Engle's work also fully qualifies as an example of the genre that Colin Manlove in his 1992 Christian Fantasy from 1200 to the Present defines as Christian fantasy, and in his 1999 The Fantasy Literature of England--following on Brian Attebery's "fuzzy set" concept--subsumes under a larger category of metaphysical fantasy: "a fictional effort to preserve the metaphysical view of life in a world where belief in it is fading" (England 4). Although I think Manlove's perspective is a bit skewed in his persistent insistence that "Christian fantasy seems a dying form [. …
International Research in Children's Literature, 2010
This essay examines the cultural maps of Eastern European nations drawn by Philip Pullman in His ... more This essay examines the cultural maps of Eastern European nations drawn by Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials trilogy, Jonathan Stroud in The Bartimaeus Trilogy and J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series. I argue that each of those authors, in subtle and unintentional ways, perpetuates Western politico-cultural superiority in regard to Eastern Europeans. One reason for this may be that Pullman, Stroud and Rowling share a specifically British cultural attitude of regarding the continent as alien and incomprehensible. This perspective is part of a fuzzy cluster of notions, seemingly widespread across Europe, which comprise what Lawrence J. Sharpe calls ‘an East-West continuum of cultural one-upmanship’ (309). As the most westerly people on this continuum, so the explanation goes, the British tend to look down on everyone else to the East. My focus in this article is on how these attitudes are communicated in some of the most internationally popular British fantasy series of the re...
This is the Introduction to my book Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction (Routledge 2015). ... more This is the Introduction to my book Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction (Routledge 2015). The book offers an evolutionary history of the concept of justice as represented in speculative literature for the young reader. The study brings together reflection on speculative fiction, moral imagination, cognitive science, global citizenship, environmental awareness, and justice literacy. The 20th-century expansion of Young Adult speculative fiction is linked with the emergence of human and civil rights movements and with the communitarian revolution in conceptualizations of justice. The book contends that complex ideas such as justice are processed by the human mind as cognitive scripts; that scripts, when narrated, take the form of script-rich stories; and that YA speculative fiction is currently the largest conceptual testing ground in the forging of justice consciousness for the 21st-century world. The argument draws on recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences, suggesting that we are getting better at identifying different types of injustice and better at imagining alternatives to injustice. Overall, the book demonstrates that any progressive change must first be imagined and that the stories offered by speculative fiction are especially suited to create emotionally-relevant models for attitudes and behaviors in a world of global diversity.
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