Anna Vaninskaya

Gebundenes Buch

Fantasies of Time and Death

Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien

Beschreibung

This book reveals the unique contribution made by the three founding fathers of British fantasy-Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien-to our culture's perennial reassessment of the meanings of time, death and eternity. It traces the poetic, philosophical and theological roots of the striking preoccupation with mortality and temporality that defines the imagined worlds of early fantasy fiction, and gives both the form of such fiction and its ideas the attention they deserve. Dunsany, Eddison and Tolkien raise some of the oldest questions in existence: about the limits of nature, human and divine; cosmic creation and destruction; the immortality conferred by art and memory; and the paradoxes and uncertainties generated by the universal experience of transience, the fear of annihilation and the desire for transcendence. But they respond to those questions by means of thought experiments that have no precedent in modern literary history.
This book has won the '2021 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award' for Myth and Fantasy Studies.

Autor

Anna Vaninskaya is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is the author of William Morris and the Idea of Community (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and over forty articles and book chapters on nineteenth and twentieth-century literature, politics and history.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan / Palgrave Macmillan UK / Springer Palgrave Macmillan
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 978-1-137-51837-8
• 1st edition 2020
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. Januar 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 153mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 450g
• ISBN-13: 9781137518378
• ISBN-10: 1137518375
• Artikelnr.: 58280209

Rezensionen

"This is an important study of two critically undersubscribed authors and an impressive look at a third who benefits from reconsideration in relation to them. It is not the last word on any of its subject texts, but it serves as a robust contribution to a weighty, potentially inexhaustible debate." (JosephYoung, Gramarye, Issue 19, 2021)

"Fantasies of Time and Death makes us hungry to return to the primary worlds it discusses." (Sarah R.A. Waters, Mythlore, Vol. 39 (2), 2021)

"One of the greatest strengths of this study overall is Vaninskaya's extensive familiarity with the work of each author ... . The volume is particularly well suited as a reference for readers who are already well-versed in the works of one or more of these three authors. ... Overall, it is a thorough and thoughtful work which will be of value for studies of all three authors." (Holly Ordway, Journal of Inklings Studies, Vol. 10 (1), October, 2020)

"Vaninskaya's attentive, detailed, and well-supported claims, which remain strong through the entirety of the text, will likely be a welcome addition to the shelves of academics interested in the subjects of time and death or these authors, as well as libraries looking to expand their selection of volumes on the same." (R. J. Murphy, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 31 (3), 2020)