EXTRACT FOR
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 35.2
(JFA)
|
Contents Latinx
Young Adult Fantasy as Guides through Portals: A Potential
Framework for Portals as Sites for Agency and Identity 8 Jordan
Alves-Foss Time
Travel as the Displacement of the Fantastic: The Shifting Temporal
Paradigms of Genre and Narratology in the Outlander Television Drama 40 Michael
Unger The Ekphrastic Narrative of
the Silmarils: The Prevalence of Ekphrasis in J. R. R.
Tolkien’s The Silmarillion 63 Patrícia
Sá Creative Think Piece: A Gift From Pegasus 90 Jean Lorrah David
G. Hartwell Award Winner, 2024 “The
Beauty of the House is Immeasurable”: Susanna Clarke's Piranesi
on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape During the
Covid Pandemic 101 Liz
Busby David
G. Hartwell Award Winner, 2024 Toxic
Tales: The Craft of Enchantment in Fiction and Memoir 113 Sasha
Bailyn Walter James Miller Memorial Award
Winner, 2024 Resurrecting Indigenous Sciences from
the Prehistoric Myths of Chinese Ancestral Tribes: The Whimsical
Cosmographer in Weiyu’s Great Fable Tetralogy 125 Yuheng
Ko Analyzing Works Of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and
Octavia E. Butler As Prophetic Literature In American
Society 150 Stevens
Orozco Map Before Territory: Cartography and Ecology
in Erik Granström’s Svavelvinter 173 Svante
Landgraf REVIEWS Anastasio, Matteo, Margot Brink, Lisa Dauth, Andrew
Erickson, Isabelle Leitloff, and Jan
Rhein’s (eds.) Transnationale Literaturen und Literaturtransfer im 20. und 21. Jarhrhundert: Plurilinguale und
interdisziplinare Perspektiven 198 Rev. by Alexis Brooks de Vita Kimberly Cleveland’s Africanfuturism:
African Imaginings of Other Times, Spaces, and Worlds 209 Rev. by
Olawale Oladokun Antonio Córdoba and Emily A. Maguire’s Posthumanism
and Latin(x) American Science Fiction 215 Rev. by
Cailey Poirier Abstracts Jordan Alves-Foss This essay proposes a new overarching
framework, portals as sites for agency and identity, for analyzing portals
within fantasy as a potential way to analyze a character’s agency and identity.
Under this larger framework, this essay proposes five different types of
portals: Exploration, Intrusion, Agency/Transformation, Destruction, and the
Portal not Traveled. By looking at how characters move across these different
portals and how these portals are presented, readers and theorists can analyze
characters’ levels of agency and the shaping of their identity. This analysis
can reveal larger implications of what identities are protected, valued or
sacrificed, and thus reveal more extensive commentaries about the world at
large. Finally, this essay puts forth an argument that Latinx Critical Theory
should be included in future fantasy work, as it provides a powerful analysis
into what it means to be a person trapped between two worlds. While the case is
made for all fantasy works, examples are specifically made with Zoraida
Córdova’s Labyrinth Lost, Aiden Thomas’s The Sunbearer Trials, and, briefly, Louis Sachar’s Holes. Michael Unger The
critically acclaimed television drama Outlander (Starz: 2014-present) in its
first two seasons challenged the ontological flexibility and narrative
pleasures of time travel by presenting it initially as an earthbound fantasy in
Season 1 and then as an explicated facet of a science fiction rationality in
Season 2. This essay examines how the first two seasons of Outlander constitute
what I term “the displacement of the fantastic”: an ongoing structural segue of
what Tzvetan Todorov categorizes as a literary construct of the fantastic
marvelous in which a narrative’s protagonist, and by extension the reader, move
from the fantastic as a duration of uncertainty in the narrative to the
marvelous, in which the supernatural entity or phenomenon is accepted and
explained. The displacement of the fantastic thus allows for the viewer to
experience two time-travel pleasures and premises: the fantasy of the
paradoxical time loop where causality is void and the standing stones operate
as a temporal glitch in Outlander’s first season, and then as a science fiction
theorization of the multiverse in Season 2. The formation of chronology of the
closed causal time loop in Season 1 transforms into multiple timelines that
contain different narrative paradoxes, making the narrative of Claire’s
relationships across time and history itself become more complex through
fantastical portals. As Claire tries to correct the wrongs of her past and
history writ large, the narrative of time travel appeals to the viewer’s
fantasy to go back in time, addressing thematic issues of time and memory and
historical revisionism, engaging the viewer by raising questions about his/her
own experiences. How does the past influence the present? Can one correct the wrongs of the past? The Ekphrastic Narrative of the Silmarils: The Prevalence of Ekphrasis in J. R.
R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion The current understanding of ekphrasis is of a verbal
recreation of a visual representation and is quite different from ekphrasis as
it was understood in Classical Antiquity, when it pertained to imaginary
objects, people, places, time periods, and events. Ancient ekphrasis is
description animated by narrative, to make a subject stand out as crucial. As
Page duBois claims in her 1982 study History, Rhetorical Description, and the Epic: From Homer to Spenser, ekphrasis operates as a significant turning point in
the epic, the mark of a change in the narrative. Examples similar
to its ancient use can still be found in the present day. This paper
investigates the uses of ekphrasis in Tolkien’s fantasy world in the The Silmarillion, demonstrating that the
descriptions of the Silmarils are not merely
ornamental but crucial to the overall narrative, and are thus examples of
ancient ekphrasis. It is not simply description of a decorative object, a
fragment of the text; ekphrasis speaks of how the object looks, how
it comes to be, and what sort of feelings it inspires, thereby creating a vivid
representation in the reader’s imagination. Tolkien creates vivid images of the
Silmarils so that they feel like living things. Their
imaginary quality allows for an infinite number of representations, as each
reader is thus able to invent their own Silmarils.
Readers may be moved by the characters who lust for the Silmarils
because they know that an inevitable, tragic destiny shadows them. On the other
hand, characters who handle the Silmarils with noble
purpose revive the reader’s hope in the triumph of good over evil, Tolkien’s eucatastrophe. This evokes Ruth
Webb’s assertion that ekphrasis, in its ancient understanding, hinges on its
impact on an audience (“Ekphrasis Ancient
and Modern” 12). Thus, readers become a part of the literary process.
With the exploration of these ideas, I add to the conversation regarding the
ancient use of ekphrasis in Tolkien’s fiction and lend weight to the argument
that despite its distance in time, ekphrasis in its primordial understanding
still has a place in contemporary texts, not only in poetry, but narrative
fiction as well, and would therefore benefit from further discussion. Liz Busby David G. Hartwell Award Winner, 2024 “The Beauty of the House is
Immeasurable”: Susanna Clarke's Piranesi
on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape During the Covid Pandemic When
Susanna Clarke wrote her novel Piranesi,
she could not have predicted that it would be published during a global
pandemic. The book’s narrative of being trapped alone in an infinite interior
space resonates with the enforced social isolation during the Covid-19
pandemic. Piranesi copes with his isolation through his study of the symbolic
statues that line the halls of the House: their stories become a lifeline,
enabling his survival in otherwise insufferable circumstances. Perhaps one of
the most unique things about reading Piranesi
during the pandemic is its reframing of a quiet life confined to an interior
space as tranquil and beautiful rather than constricting and claustrophobic.
This perspective on abiding in a work of art echoes a formalist appreciation of
story: story doesn’t need to mean anything or have any practical application in
the world to be valuable. Sasha Bailyn David G. Hartwell Award Winner, 2024 Toxic Tales: The Craft of
Enchantment in Fiction and Memoir Enchantment
is not a genre in and of itself, falling somewhere between speculative and
magical realism. It’s a craft approach that takes the reader out of a linear,
logical experience of reality, while highlighting and exploring the
complexities of life. What distinguishes enchanted storytelling is its form,
which references or directly imitates classic European fairy tales. Enchantment
is a perspective, a slanted look at reality. It asks readers to let go of
expectations and whisks them out of the ordinary, away from linear, logical
lives. But to be convincing, enchantment must occur in the day-to-day, with a
sense of depth and purpose—reflection, as opposed to pure escape. This is not a
study of enchantment as genre, but as craft device: what are its uses in prose,
and how is it deployed in both fiction and creative nonfiction? This essay
explores how Gingerbread, a fairy
tale rewrite novel by Helen Oyeyemi, and the fairy
tale-like memoir In the Dream House
by Carmen Maria Machado, are alike or different in their enchanted prose. Yuheng Ko Walter James Miller Memorial Award
Winner, 2024 Resurrecting
Indigenous Sciences from the Prehistoric Myths of Chinese Ancestral Tribes: The
Whimsical Cosmographer in Weiyu’s Great Fable
Tetralogy This article proposes to read the
speculative aesthetics of Weiyu’s Great Fable tetralogy as an example of
indigenous Chinese science fiction based on its appropriation of the motif of
cosmographical collection from Chinese zhiguai,
or strange tales, and its rationalization of Chinese origin mythology and
folklore through a whimsical rhetoric that appeals to modern scientific
discourse while simultaneously questioning its epistemological foundation. This
reading of Indigenous Chinese science fiction underscores the close ties
between internet literature, science fiction, and the modernity discourse of
the Chinese literary establishment since May Fourth, particularly in relation
to key issues such as vernacular language, anti-orthodox innovation, and critical
reflection on scientific reasoning. Through an analysis of the central
whimsical figure, the shen-gun or
godly trickster, I will demonstrate how Weiyu
develops a distinctive strategy of mythological rationalization—one that both
inherits and subverts the approach of her May Fourth predecessors, shaped by
the emergent whimsical paradigm in internet literature. Stevens Orozco In
exploring the connections between the literary arts and the history of society,
this study points to the existence of a prophetic element within the proposed
formula by French historian Hippolyte Taine when analyzing works of African
American writers James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Octavia E. Butler. By tracing
the history of society through a linear path of published and canonized works,
this essay argues in support of Taine’s theory that the molding of society
throughout history is a result of the manipulation of identities and narratives
that have established the foundation for the historically dominant culture in a
multicultural society in literature, philosophy, and government. The importance
of the human element of the writer cannot be overstated for this formula to be
successful. It is the writer who lives the shared experiences of the society
they inhabit. The sense of identity of the writer depends on the systemic
beliefs of their homeland in regards to race, ethnicity, and faith. These systemic
beliefs shape the social conditions, the political environment, and the power
dynamics that exist between the social classes of people. The tension of the
social climate is influenced by how these sub-elements interact with and react
to one another. The success of Taine’s formula relies upon the passage of time
and technological advancement for writers to develop a sharper literary lens
for predicting future trends and civilizations. Historical narratives expose
the society’s victims and resistors within the margins of its neglected
storylines. This has led to moments in which the morality of a nation is
confronted and the threat of a collapse looms larger as the balance between
social classes becomes overburdened by greed, selfishness, and hatred. Taine did
not live long enough to witness the possibilities for massive data collection
and historical documentation created by the information age. In response to
this new potential for narrative manipulation, this essay demonstrates that the
twentieth-century works of Baldwin, Morrison, and Butler have executed a
practice of radical imagination that succeeds in reclaiming their community’s
identity, narrative, and history. Mirroring the years leading to the Civil War,
as well as the years leading to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,
this current moment has been constructed by the same oppositional forces and
narratives that have plagued the nation since its founding. Whether analyzing
through the Hegelian historical cycles or the prophetic writings of Baldwin,
Morrison, and Butler, this moment had been foreseen and has arrived. This
practice of radical imagination produces a forward vision consciousness that
transparently addresses the status of postcolonial society and proposes
attitudes and approaches to confront obstacles that still lie ahead. Svante Landgraf Map Before
Territory: Cartography and Ecology in Erik Granström’s Svavelvinter This
article analyzes the maps in the Svavelvinter
series of novels and role-playing games by Swedish author Erik Granström. The maps activate readers, turning them into
players of the game. These cases are examples of how the fantastic is
intimately tied to a transgression of material boundaries: between reader and textworld, between map and territory, and between narrative
levels in the text. This essay studies how different maps are represented in
texts, how the reader is activated in different ways so that the distinction
between text and game becomes blurred, and how the fantastic allows for a
convergence of metaphor, theme and form. I further highlight the transgression
of material boundaries in the fantastic aesthetic object: between reader and textworld as the reader interprets maps in the book,
between map and textworld territory as the map can
magically affect the space it depicts, and between narrative levels in the text
by metafictional leaps. This convergence is accomplished by employing tools and
strategies connected to the field of general ecology, encompassing themes such
as the dissolution of boundaries between human and nonhuman actors, between
living and nonliving matter, between nature and culture, and decentralizing the
place of humanity in the world. The fantastic mode affords specific methods for
blurring form and content, for example, when the map occurs as metaphor, theme
and form. This hybrid nature of the fantastic aesthetic object reveals
ecological themes in the texts and contributes to making the reader a
co-creator of the aesthetic experience. This transgressive property of the
fantastic shows the importance of studying that form of literature in this age
of increasing ecologization of space, of
reconfigurations and renegotiations: migration and globalization simultaneously
transcend and highlight issues of physical borders and of places blending into
each other; technological developments in augmented reality and online
communications blur the lines between virtual and actual space; the concept of
the Anthropocene highlights how humanity is reshaping the physical world. In
the fantastic, these aspects of the world are made especially visible; the
metaphors can take on literal meanings, bringing light to how nature and
technology, science and culture, human and non-human interact and intertwine. |