This book is about the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic. In it, the author argues that the definition of the fantastic presented by Tzvetan Todorov in 1970 can be used, provided it is first adapted to a media-ecological framework, to theorize the role of aesthetic participation in the creation of secondary worlds. Working within a hermeneutical tradition, Todorov understands reader participation as interpretation, in which the creative ambiguities of the literary object are primarily epistemological. However, it is here argued that the aesthetic object of the fantastic is also characterized by material ambiguity. The purpose of this dissertation is then to present a conceptual framework with which to theorize the relation between the material and the epistemological ambiguity of the fantastic. It is argued that such a framework can be found in an ecological understanding of aesthetic participation. This, in turn, entails understanding human subjectivity as a process always already embodied in a material environment. To this extent, the proposed theoretical framework questions the clear and oppositional distinction between form and matter, as well as that between mind and body, nature and culture, and human and non-human, on which a modern and humanist notion of subjectivity is based. And in this sense, the basic ecological assumptions of this dissertation are posthumanist, or non-humanist. From this position, it is argued that an ecological understanding of participation offers a means to reformulate the function of a number of concepts central to studying the aesthetics of the fantastic, most notably the concepts of media, genre and text. As the fantastic focuses on the creation of other worlds, it is an aesthetics of coming into being, of ontogenesis. Accordingly, it will be argued that the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic operationalizes the ontogenesis of media, genres and texts. By mapping the ontogenesis of three distinct media ecologies – the media ecology of fantasy and J. R. R. Tolkien’s secondary world Middle-earth; the media ecology of the American comic book superhero Miracleman; and the media ecology of William Blake – this book argues that the ecological imagination generates world. Per Israelson has been a doctoral candidate in the Research School of Studies in Cultural History at the department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Ecologies of the Imagination is his dissertation.

This master's thesis deals with the influence of The Kalevala and the Finnish language on the English writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his work. The main purpose is to provide a possibly most complex description of The Kalevala's influence on Tolkien. Firstly, the background of The Kalevala, the role of Elias Lönnrot during its birth and its importance, and secondly, Tolkien, his work and his discovery of The Kalevala are introduced. The main part of the thesis focuses on Tolkien's inspiration by The Kalevala out of three different perspectives. The first one is the influence of the Finnish language on Quenya, one of Tolkien's fictional languages. The second one is The Kalevala's importance for Tolkien from a general point of view - especially the influence of Lönnrot's role, The Kalevala's mythology, several abstract aspects of The Kalevala led by the importance of singing and The Kalevala's structure is crucial. The third one is Tolkien's inspiration by The Kalevala from a concrete point of view. Particularly the importance of The Kalevala's character Väinämöinen and the story of the Sampo is significant here.

<p>Syftet med föreliggande uppsats var att, genom litteraturstudier av C. S. Lewis Narnia-serie samt J. R. R. Tolkiens <em>Härskarringen, </em>undersöka förekomsten av kristusgestaltning i nämnda litteratur. Genom att studera nämnda verk var avsikten även att undersöka de eventuella kristna influenser som återspeglar författarnas egen tro och närmare studera de tänkbara paralleller med Bibelns Kristus som förekommer. Utifrån de analyser som görs av texterna i arbetet blir slutsatsen att även om det finns klara influenser från Bibelns Kristusgestalt kan man inte i båda böckerna se en klar kristusgestalt. När det gäller <em>Härskarringen </em>finns där inte en klart framträdande Kristus även om de kristna influenserna är många. När det gäller Narnia är de kristna influenserna tydligare och parallellerna med Kristus framträder klarare.</p>

Syftet med föreliggande uppsats var att, genom litteraturstudier av C. S. Lewis Narnia-serie samt J. R. R. Tolkiens Härskarringen, undersöka förekomsten av kristusgestaltning i nämnda litteratur. Genom att studera nämnda verk var avsikten även att undersöka de eventuella kristna influenser som återspeglar författarnas egen tro och närmare studera de tänkbara paralleller med Bibelns Kristus som förekommer. Utifrån de analyser som görs av texterna i arbetet blir slutsatsen att även om det finns klara influenser från Bibelns Kristusgestalt kan man inte i båda böckerna se en klar kristusgestalt. När det gäller Härskarringen finns där inte en klart framträdande Kristus även om de kristna influenserna är många. När det gäller Narnia är de kristna influenserna tydligare och parallellerna med Kristus framträder klarare.

Uppsatsen jämför de båda svenska översättningarna av JRR Tolkiens Lord of the Rings: Åke Ohlmarks Sagan om ringen från 1959 och Erik Anderssons Ringens brödraskap från 2004.Syftet är att se vilken översättning som är närmast originalet och författarens intentioner. Genom att jämföra olika uttryck ges en konkret bild av vilken översättning som mest överensstämmer med Tolkiens originaltext.Dessutom tas olika aspekter på översättande i allmänhet upp, likväl som vilka specifika svårigheter som finns i översättandet av bokens olika konstruerade språk.Min slutsats är att Ringens brödraskap är mest trogen originalet och att läsaren i den får mer eget tolkningsuttrymme.

The thesis is organized as two sections of two chapters each: the first section establishes a theoretical framework of a broad and reinvigorated Christian sacramentality within which to situate the second—an investigation of the theories and practice of the mythopoeic art of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in this sacramental light. The first chapter acknowledges the thoroughgoing disenchantment of modernity, an effect traced to the vanishing of a sacramental understanding of the world, and then explores the history of the sacramental concept that would seek to be reclaimed and reconceived as a possible means of the re-enchantment of Western culture such as in the recent work of David Brown. An appreciative critique of Brown's work is offered in chapter two before proposing an alternative understanding of a distinctly Christian and reinvigorated sacramentality anchored in the Incarnation and operating by Transposition. A notion of sacramental vision is developed from the perceptual basis in its classic definitions, and a sacramental understanding of story is considered from a theological perspective on the infinite generativity of meaning in texts, along with recent theories of affect and affordance. The second half of the thesis expounds the views of mythopoeia held by Lewis and Tolkien in order to show how they are not only compatible with but lead to a sacramental understanding of story as developed in part one, with mythopoeia affording the recovery of a potentially transformative vision of reality, awakening it into focus in distinctly Christian ways (chapter three). The final chapter demonstrates how their mythopoeic theories are exemplified in their art, examining specific ways Till We Have Faces and The Lord of the Rings afford the recovery of a potentially transformative vision of various themes central to them. In closing it is suggested that such a sacramental understanding of story may contribute to the re-enchantment of Western culture, not to mention the re-mythologization and re-envisaging of Christianity, whose significance in these regards has been hitherto mostly unrecognized.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-69).

The core thesis is an attempt to contextual interpretation of fairy tales K. J. Erben from the perspective of theological anthropology. And in the context of the overall issue of fairy tales then they found values that can be picked up and interpreted in this way. Own interpretation precedes five theoretical chapters where first discuss the issue of fairy tales, their typology, origin and development. And about the specifics of time and formation by K. J. Erben. Homer and J. R. R. Tolkien become the inspiration for subsequent interpretation. Both works have been interpreted by Christian. Integrative and reconstructive theory and is shown in the interpretation of two great works of world literature. Odyssey, a work whose creation is not much known, is a model for integrative theory. The Lord of the Rings introduces reconstructive theory, because here it is the opposite. From the peculiar structure of the classic fairy tale, then based on its own interpretation. Its core is the study of the morphology of fairy V. J. Propp. Fairytale Firebird and Foxy Fox is an introduction to the interpretation of other fairy tales. First, its symbols are analyzed and presented in the context of the fairy happening. Later, finding the core at a time when there was not a fairy tale. And that its structure is given in connection with the initiation ritual. Consequently, there are elaborated some aspects of man: man as "soulful dust", sinner and image of God. Continuously to and in relation to other fairy tales, this topic is distributed to more general plane fatality, life, death, good and evil. Question the value is processed in the chapter on aesthetics and symbolism, with an emphasis on symbolism symbol, myth and ritual.