Never mind the city guides: The topos of a city in urban fantasy (with interpretative emphasis on Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere)

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of urban fantasy with a particular interest in the topos of a city, which assumes great significance as a thematic and motivic element in the subgenre. The authors touch upon the relation between (sub)genre and topos/topoi in general, but also more specifically, between urban fantasy and the city, regarding the urban area as a distinct setting with a specific atmosphere, character or genius loci. Within this frame, the paper seeks to exemplify the aforementioned relations through an interpretative study of Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere, which breathes life into the London underground scene. London Below comes to personify, literally, the vices of London Above via the use of anthropomorphic strategies. Moreover, the spatial peculiarities of the novel not only contribute to the creation of the fantastical atmosphere but they also function as a vehicle of social critique and a constitutive element of the protagonist’s transformation.

(Dis)Enchanting the City: Charles de Lint’s Urban Fantasy Fiction

The aim of this article is to investigate the works of Charles de Lint in order to evaluate their position within the genre of urban fantasy. The theoretical framework is adopted from Stefan Ekman’s article “Urban Fantasy: A Literature of the Unseen” (2016) which investigates the genre’s development and formulates a list of its most distinctive features. While this article uses Ekman’s study to examine de Lint’s fictional cities, it also indicates how de Lint’s works challenge Ekman’s analysis. Moreover, the article demonstrates how de Lint’s concern with problems of urban communities transforms his works into narratives of social inclusion, which are particularly significant in the age of the Anthropocene.

Metaphoric national accents in the novels by Ransom Riggs and Mariam Petrosyan (“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”–“The House in Which...”)

The article provides an aspectual literary assessment of R. Riggs's pentalogy and M. Petrosyan’s trilogy (“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”–“The House in Which...”) based on a comparative analysis of the works. Demonstrates the relevance of the fantasy genre in modern literary study, in particular, the strengthening of myth-making processes and the corresponding growth of influence of the fantasy component in the literary and artistic process of the first decades of the XXI century. It is shown that urban fantasy as one of the most productive varieties of the genre subtly reflects the realities and prospects of the “second nature” of the contemporary and receives an increasing ideological load in the XXI century. For the first time the main configurative fantasy parameters of the cycle in the context of the crisis of mythmaking of the early XXI century are defined.

Mercy Thompson de Patricia Briggs – une série pour les jeunes féministes ?

Nowadays, young adult literature is becoming increasingly popular and occupies an important place in the book market. Among the different genres offered to young readers, urban fantasy has a considerable potential. The aim of the present study is to examine if Patricia Briggs’ series about the adventures of Mercy Thompson can be considered as a literary work for young feminists. The analysis of the protagonist (an urban hunter and a shapeshifter) and some events in her life (relationship with her partner and rape) demonstrates the feminist aspect of the series.

The Urban Zemiology of Carnival Row: Allegory, Racism and Revanchism

This article makes the case for the zemiological value of Fredric Jameson’s (2019) model of fourfold allegory. Zemiological value is the value in reducing harm and it is realized by means of etiology, i.e., explaining the causes of harm. I make the case using a single, detailed example, but the argument is generalizable by virtue of the relationship between fourfold allegory and contemporary social life. I begin by delineating Jameson’s model of allegory as a thick narrative with four distinct levels of meaning: literal, symbolic, existential and anthropic. I explain each of these levels with reference to Carnival Row (2019)—an urban fantasy television series that explores racism, alienation and decivilization. I conclude by demonstrating how the allegory reveals a particular combination of causes that contribute to the replacement of a cosmopolitan ideal with a revanchist reality, articulated by Gareth Millington (2011) in his theory of the racialized global metropolis.

The Legacy of German Romanticism in Russian Urban Fantasy

The philosophical views of German romantics, as well as images, motives, chronotopes characteristic of German romanticism, embodied in the domestic urban fantasy are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the techniques of the comparative method. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the almost complete absence of works devoted to the study of urban fantasy. It is noted that this fantasy subgenre has not been considered in detail in the context of the continuation of the traditions of romantic German literature. The theoretical basis of the research is presented by the works of M. M. Bakhtin, N. Ya. Berkovsky, V. M. Zhirmunsky, Yu. M. Lotman, S. S. Levochsky, etc. It was revealed that urban fantasy inherits the main images, themes, motives, symbols that dominated in German romanticism: the motive of a double, the image of a doll, an artist, etc. It was established that the authors of urban fantasy not only reproduce the image of a romantic artist-creator, but depict a character-demiurge. It has been proven that urban fantasy deepens and transforms the romantic “night beginning”: the images of the dead and vampires become plot-forming characters in independent series of works. It is concluded that the authors of urban fantasy, like German romantics, activate the readers’ attention to mythology and folklore, creating new fantastic worlds with their help.