scholarly journals A Journey Beyond Reality: Poetic Prose and Lush Imagery in Tanith Lee’s Night’s Master

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
Barbora Vinczeová
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Detective Novels ◽  
Poetic Prose

Abstract Tanith Lee was a “highly decorated writer” (Chappell 1) whose work ranged from science-fiction, through fantasy and children’s literature to contemporary and detective novels. Although she published more than ninety novels and three hundred short stories, her audience has diminished through the years, affecting also the academic interest in her works. The aims of this article are to provide a literary analysis of one of her most famous novels, Night’s Master, and answer the question of why readers describe her prose as “lush” and “poetic”; and also interpret the recurring symbolism and themes of beauty, sexuality and metamorphosis in the work. This article also highlights the similarities between the novel and fairy tales in regard of numeric symbolism and morals.

The Alluring Nature of Children's Culture: Fairy Tales, the Carnival and the World Wide Web

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Željka Flegar
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Time Out ◽  
The Social ◽  
Children's Culture ◽  
Language And Ideology

This article discusses the implied ‘vulgarity’ and playfulness of children's literature within the broader concept of the carnivalesque as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1965) and further contextualised by John Stephens in Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction (1992). Carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales are examined by situating them within Cristina Bacchilega's contemporary construct of the ‘fairy-tale web’, focusing on the arenas of parody and intertextuality for the purpose of detecting crucial changes in children's culture in relation to the social construct and ideology of adulthood from the Golden Age of children's literature onward. The analysis is primarily concerned with Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (1982) and J. K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2007/2008) as representative examples of the historically conditioned empowerment of the child consumer. Marked by ambivalent laughter, mockery and the degradation of ‘high culture’, the interrogative, subversive and ‘time out’ nature of the carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales reveals the striking allure of contemporary children's culture, which not only accommodates children's needs and preferences, but also is evidently desirable to everybody.

scholarly journals Looking for national and genre identity in the modern Russian and Hungarian author fairy tale (on the example of the texts by A. Kabakov, A. Stepanov and A. Mosonyi)

2020 ◽  
pp. 383-398
Author(s):  
Polina V. Korolkova
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Adult Reader ◽  
Modern Russian

The essay deals with the interaction between the genre transformations of the author fairy tale and the national problematics, as well as the question of the modern strategies of genre renewal on the example of the texts by modern Russian and Hungarian writers (“The Moscow fairy tales” by A. Kabakov, “The fairy tales not about people” by A. Stepa-nov, “The Budapest fairy tales” and “The supermarket fairy tales” by A. Mosonyi). Among other questions, I address the so-called “genre me-mory” (M. Lipovetsky’s term), which in the texts by Kabakov, Stepanov, and Mosonyi functions at the level of entire cycles but rarely at the level of separate texts. With regard to the fi eld of children’s literature, the na-tional locus makes the texts appear more modern-looking and therefore appealing to an adult reader who rediscovers the details of everyday life. The opposite strategy is often applied in the philosophical, parable or political fairy tales, when the authors give priority to the nation-specifi c, nuanced and recognizable locus, which at the same time receives the features of the fairy tale or mythological space.

scholarly journals The Concept of “Thrownness” in Algis Budrys's Short Story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night”

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Svetozar Poštič
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Physical Frailty ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
German Philosopher

This paper analyses the concept of thrownness and the related notions of immediacy and actuality in a 1961 short science fiction story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night” by Algis Budrys. It first defines the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit), created and coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his classic book Being and Time, and it explains how this notion can be employed in literary analysis in general and applied to this work in particular. The article then analyses how certain stylistic devices in the short story, namely similes, change of pace and the presentation of an inner conflict in the main character, contribute to the feeling of authenticity. In other words, it attempts to exhibit the means used in a prose work to make it seem more realistic and immediate. Finally, the work also argues that science fiction is in many ways more real than other fictional works. Although it belongs to the genre that has traditionally been denied serious literary merit, the novel view and interpretation of this story aims to disclose new horizons of artistic expression that illuminate human mental and physical frailty and stimulate a valuable inquiry into the meaning of life.

“Houses are alive. No?”The image of a “revived” house in English literaturein the late XIX — early XX century

2020 ◽  
pp. 298-312
Author(s):  
Georgy A. Veligorsky ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Gothic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Howards End ◽  
Edwardian Literature ◽  
Horror Literature

In this article we will talk about the unusual topos that occurs in Victorian and Edwardian literature — the “revived” estate. Indirectly going back to Gothic literature and the “horror literature” that inherited it (where the house can come to life literally, become harmful, frightening and even mortally dangerous for the inhabitant), however, it develops in a completely different way. The ghosts that inhabit the rooms of such a mansion are the guardians of a good and bright memory, “hidden joy”; embodied by the past, who lives in a shaky, invisible world. These ghosts have many hypostases: sometimes they turn out to be just a figment of the tenant’s imagination, and sometimes they are a real poltergeist, but not frightening, but protecting and preserving (W. Woolf, “A Haunted House”). Another manifestation of this topos can be called a house that comes to life, when the hero distinguishes between the beating of his heart (as happens in the novel by E.M. Forster “Howards End”) or hears a whisper of voices in the curtains shaken by the wind. The combination of these two motives (poltergeist and living house) is also found in the works of modernists (W. Woolf, “Orlando: A Biography”). Of particular interest is the image of a revived estate house in children’s literature; in this vein, we will consider the novel by Ph. Pierce, “Tom’s Midnight Garden”.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document