Every four years, two children from the village of Gavaldon are kidnapped. They’re taken to the famed School for Good and Evil, where they are trained to be either storybook heroes or villains. The lovely but arrogant Sophie can’t wait to be kidnapped. She knows...
A mermaid is a creature that is half woman and have fish. The literal meaning of “Mer” means “the sea”. The male version is called a merman. Legends of the Mer go back thousands of years. There are even some skeptics who say that once...
Everyone has his or her own idea of literature and what separates a work of literary fiction from a work of popular fiction. Generally speaking, a work must adhere to literary traditions, convey a deeper meaning, and present conventional themes in order to be recognized...
Green Girl is a fantasy story written by Cyan Abad Jugo. Although it may sound like a story for children, the story is actually not meant for kids. Green Girl is actually a story that raises the issue of gender and social criticism. However, as...
I give the book Becoming the Dragon (The Dragon Inside Book 1) 3 out of 4 stars. It’s not my typical genre, but I have really enjoyed reading this. The reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 4 stars is because when the book...
During his search to find his missing twin sister, Will Cleary gets drawn into a mysterious crystal-like world parallel to his own. This world is populated by Echoes, a reflection of the Sounds residing in the living world. When a person (or Sound) dies, his...
Growing up means growing up with stereotypes and gender roles following behind like an annoying friend. They mature, starting from being expected to playing with and nursing dolls, or destroying toys and playing in the mud, and from there never seem to end. As a...
What is a Witch? A witch, in the most simple form, is a woman believed to have magic or supernatural abilities and that these powers are used for evil or nefarious purposes. Many people accused of being a witch were thought to be associated with...
When it comes to works of fiction, it is always most interesting to see where the author draws inspiration for the major characters from and what the underlying message of the story at hand. Disillusioned from faith as a child, C. S. Lewis would find...
Is the real beast the patriarchy? From a story where beauty becomes a beast, underlying issues of femininity, identity, and society are questioned, years before Disney upheld traditional notions of a female’s role through their portrayal of Beauty and the Beast. The Tiger’s Bride by...
Octavia Butler’s Kindred involves two central themes of time travel and slavery. Published in 1979, the novel focuses on many issues during slavery in the 1800’s including the abuse of power, gender hierarchy, and the outcome of racial conflict. The novel features a twentieth century...
Ransom Riggs, an American filmmaker and writer, first got his idea for a novel with pictures when he randomly ran across some sinister-looking vintage photos. Ransom recalls, “the photos suggest stories even though you don’t know who the people are or exactly when they were...
Absolute monarchies have carried a negative connotation throughout history and have been the source of many rebellions and wars. However, if an absolute monarch learns to be just and execute his power rationally, then his or her reign can be pleasant and the nation can...
The biggest difference that I noticed between the French version of Beauty and the Beast and the Disney version is the Disney version’s character development. In the French version, it talks about Beauty’s story and how she had to leave her father and fall in...
Being overcome with feelings of anger, sadness, happiness, joy, worry, disgust-whatever it may be, with fingers dry from flipping pages like they have got a mind of their own, and eyes frantically scanning for sentences and words-for whatever happens next. Sometimes being so transfixed with...
Both C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea tackle the idea of the child-protagonists having to go on a type of journey to defeat their respective foes and partaking in a search for their self-identity...
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Vladimir Nabakov often told stories of men and women destroyed by unknowing forces and desires driving them to madness....
The movie I have chosen to talk about is titled “The Wizard of Oz”. Over going each genre and carefully selecting which genre this movie falls under, I picked the Fantasy Genre. One scene in the film that sticks out to me in specific is...
“Once upon a time….” the ideal beginning that conceives every child to know there will be a happy ending in a story. Fantasy is a gift that is given to us as a child and is lost as an adult, what we do not realize...
The 1980s were a decade of unfettered capitalist excess in the United States. It was a time when Gordon Gecko’s mantra, “greed is good”, was the status quo. A former Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan, was the president. The failure in Vietnam and Jimmy Carter’s administration...
“Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett challenges the stereotypical conventions of Gothic literature and provides a more modern approach to the genre. Conventionally, the Gothic is associated with terrifying creatures such as Frankenstein or Dracula, and remote, dark settings such as abandoned castles...
Abstract This research focuses on Haruki Murakami’s fantasy fiction, Kafka on the Shore, that chronicles the adventurous and metaphysical journey of a fifteen-year-old boy Kafka Tamura who leaves his home and his father behind in search of his identity which was turned void as his...
Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls, which appeared in 1982, depicts key themes such as feminism and oppression throughout history. Through the main character, Marlene, we are able to see aspects of individualism, as Marlene abandons her own daughter, Angie, due to her own career aspirations....
Neil Gaiman’s books feature young protagonists who are not like other ‘normal’ kids of their age. The protagonists are precocious, naturally curious to explore. Neil Gaiman’s books have a fairy tale aspect combined with dark themes and follow a similar pattern. In Neil Gaiman’s book...
As Course Hero’s infographic on Beowulf shows, pop culture has borrowed extensively from the poem — sometimes directly referencing Beowulf (as in Star Trek and in Xena ). More often, we’ve seen Beowulf shaping literature and film through monster outcast and dragon characters (e.g., Godzilla,...
I think it’s fascinating that a children’s story that is more than 90 years old can be so popular and beloved to this day, becoming an important part of children’s reading history around the world. For this paper, I will be analyzing A.A. Milne children’s...
In West African culture, Anansi is a cunning god, who takes the shape of a spider. He is known to be a trickster and very deceitful. He is considered the god of all knowledge of stories. In other words, Anansi owns all stories. In Anansi...
Lord Acton, a British historian, once said “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Over the course of human history, the Church has been the focus of many criticisms, including but not limited to the relationship with the state, the persecution of heretics,...
Reader response criticism is a school of formal literary theory that focuses on the reader and their experience of literature. A prime thematic or style that can be found in many of Neil Gaiman’s novels is his manner of taking the unknown and mysterious and...
In both society and literature, fetishes and sexual fantasies constantly find themselves rooted in racial differences. The philosophical concept of the “other” is one that addresses the idea of fetishization, in that we find ourselves idealizing and fantasizing about that which we are not; that...
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore.
Features
Most fantasy uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic, magic practitioners (sorcerers, witches and so on) and magical creatures are common in many of these worlds. An identifying trait of fantasy is the author's use of narrative elements that do not have to rely on history or nature to be coherent. In writing fantasy the author uses worldbuilding to create characters, situations, and settings that may not be possible in reality.
Types
There are over 50 fantasy subgenres and the list keeps on growing as brilliant writers experiment, fusing genres and subgenres together. However, the most essential are: high or epic fantasy, low fantasy, magical realism, sword and sorcery, dark fantasy, fables, fairy tales, superhero fiction.
Examples
Examples of fantasy include William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.
Authors working in this genre
C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, George R.R. Martin