Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Marek Oziewicz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350203351
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Marek Oziewicz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350203351
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction

Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction PDF Author: Tereza Dědinová
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1793636648
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book

Book Description
In order to demonstrate that speculative fiction provides a valuable contribution to the discussion about the challenges of the Anthropocene, Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction investigates a range of novels whose subject matter pertains to various aspects of the Anthropocene. These include the destruction and protection of the natural environment, the relationship between human and non-human inhabitants of the planet, the role of myth in the shaping of and combat against the Anthropocene, the political dimensions of the Anthropocene, the ensuing threat of the Apocalypse, and the role of post-apocalyptic narratives. To explore these topics our authors examine the works of Patricia Briggs, M.R. Carey, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, Stephenie Meyer, China Miéville, James Patterson, Maggie Stiefvater, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Scott Westfield. Their essays demonstrate that speculative fiction, given its ability to pursue scenarios of alternative history and present familiar things in an unfamiliar way, can alter the readers’ perception of their duties and responsibilities towards their communities and the world, so that the threat of human-wrought destruction might ultimately be averted.

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene PDF Author: Marek Oziewicz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135020336X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene

Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene PDF Author: Mary Fifield
Publisher: eBookIt.com
ISBN: 1625571151
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book

Book Description
A Sámi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A teenager faces a permanent drought in Australia and her own sexual desire. An unemployed man in Wisconsin marvels as a motley parade of animals makes his trailer their portal to a world untrammeled by humans. Featuring short fiction from authors around the globe, Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis--not in the future, but today. By turns frightening, confusing, and even amusing, these stories remind us how complex, and beautiful, it is to be human in these unprecedented times.

Stories about Stories

Stories about Stories PDF Author: Brian Attebery
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199316074
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book

Book Description
The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.

Anthropocene Rag

Anthropocene Rag PDF Author: Alex Irvine
Publisher: Tordotcom
ISBN: 1250269261
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Get Book

Book Description
Anthropocene Rag is "a rare distillation of nanotech, apocalypse, and mythic Americana into a heady psychedelic brew."—Nebula and World Fantasy award-winning author Jeffrey Ford In the future United States, our own history has faded into myth and traveling across the country means navigating wastelands and ever-changing landscapes. The country teems with monsters and artificial intelligences try to unpack their own becoming by recreating myths and legends of their human creators. Prospector Ed, an emergent AI who wants to understand the people who made him, assembles a ragtag team to reach the mythical Monument City. In this nanotech Western, Alex Irvine infuses American mythmaking with terrifying questions about the future and who we will become. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Film Landscapes of Global Youth

Film Landscapes of Global Youth PDF Author: Stuart C. Aitken
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003861199
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the dynamic landscapes of global youth through spatially grounded chapters focused on film and media. It is a collection of incredible works concerning children and young people in, out, and through media as well as an examination of what is possible for the future of research within the intersections of geography, film theory, and children’s studies. It contains contributions from leading academics from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, art, film and media studies, women and gender studies, Indigenous studies, education, and geography, with chapters focused on a spatial area and the representations and relationships of children in that area through film and media. The insights presented also provide a unique and eclectic perspective on the current state of children’s research in relation to the ever-changing media landscape of the 21st century. Film Landscapes of Global Youth approaches the subjects of children and young people in film and media in a way that is not bound by genre, format, medium, or the on-/off-screen binary. Each chapter offers an insightful look at the relationships and portrayals of children and young people in relation to a specific country, culture, or geographic feature. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersections between geography, young lives, and the power of film, television, social media, content creation, and more.

Just Wonder

Just Wonder PDF Author: Pauline Greenhill
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646425855
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
Inspired by folklore, television, fairy tales, social media, novels, and films, Just Wonder addresses crucial themes in social and ecological justice efforts. Moving into the mid-twenty-first century, wonder—as a potentially critical sociocultural, ecological, and individual stance—will play a significant role in reconceptualizing the present to imagine a different and better world. These essays examine fairy tales and other traditional forms of the fantastic and the real to offer alternative expressions of justice relevant to gender, sex, sexuality, environment, Indigeneity, class, ability, race, decolonizing, and human and nonhuman relations. By analyzing fairy tales and wonder texts from various media through an intersectional feminist lens, Pauline Greenhill and Jennifer Orme consider how wonder genres and forms blend with diverse conceptions of seeking and enacting justice. International collaborators—both established and emerging scholars who self-identify with different subjectivities, locations, and generations and come from an impressive range of inter/disciplines—engage with contemporary and historical texts from various languages and cultural contexts, including interventions, counterparts, and comparisons to the fairy tale. Just Wonder offers a critical look at how creative wondering can expand the ability to resist modes of oppression while fostering equity, as well as encourage curiosity and imagination. In a world that can be overwhelming and precarious, this book presents scholarly, artistic, personal, and collective-action interventions to identify and respond to injustice while centering wonder and, thus, imagination, questioning, and hope. Just Wonder will appeal to fairy-tale scholars; folklorists; students and scholars of film, media studies, and cultural studies; as well as a general audience.

The Anthropocene Unconscious

The Anthropocene Unconscious PDF Author: Mark Bould
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839760494
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book

Book Description
From Ducks, Newburyport to zombie movies and the Fast and Furious franchise, how climate anxiety permeates our culture The art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene - the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth - is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. Typically, discussions of how culture registers, figures and mediates climate change focus on 'climate fiction' or 'cli-fi', but The Anthropocene Unconscious is more interested in how the Anthropocene and especially anthropogenic climate destabilisation manifests in texts that are not overtly about climate change - that is, unconsciously. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of 'the art and literature of our time'. Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature - across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions - this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term 'the Anthropocene', including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?

Allegories of the Anthropocene

Allegories of the Anthropocene PDF Author: Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478005580
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Get Book

Book Description
In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers—including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellán, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber—whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.