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Games, movies, television, and interactive media make use of World-Building. World-Building essentially creates an elaborate invented universe in order to give a story context. In other words it generates a back-story designed to enhance the cathartic experience and promote engagement by the reader, viewer or participant. Some examples of World-Building include Halo, World of WarCraft and Game of Thrones. Stories need context to be fully understood and experienced. One describes a situation, the environment, sensations, smells, sounds and sensory perception to give the audience a fuller, richer experience. World-Building provides context through history, textures, laws, physics and motivations. The written portion of this thesis describes the process of generating a fantasy world. The visual portion uses a character-driven narrative to examine larger themes such as psychological transformation and pursuing one’s dream against the odds. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

While fantasy as a genre is often dismissed as frivolous and inappropriate, it is highly relevant in representing and working through trauma. The fantasy genre presents spectators with images of the unsettled and unresolved, taking them on a journey through a world in which the familiar is rendered unfamiliar. It positions itself as an in-between, while the consequential disturbance of recognized world orders lends this genre to relating stories of trauma themselves characterized by hauntings, disputed memories, and irresolution. Through an examination of films from around the world and their depictions of individual and collective traumas through the fantastic, this thesis outlines how fantasy succeeds in representing and challenging histories of violence, silence, and irresolution. Further, it also examines how the genre itself is transformed in relating stories that are not yet resolved. While analysing the modes in which the fantasy genre mediates and intercedes trauma narratives, this research contributes to a wider recognition of an understudied and underestimated genre, as well as to discourses on how trauma is narrated and negotiated.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:45:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Claudia F Queiroz Evaristo.pdf: 2200391 bytes, checksum: 584b9ae11154b6dc15bc09f47e5182e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-01-31 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The novel Somewhere in Time (1975), by the American author Richard Matheson, presents time as the most relevant element in the elaboration of this novel which ranges between Fantasy and Science Fiction. Time appears in the novel through many perspectives not only as part of the narrative structure, as a character, but also connected to a musical element, more specifically to Gustav Mahler's symphonies. The main focus of this analysis is to reflect about Time and character in the narrative once time is the real antagonist in Matheson s story. In his battle against Time, the character Collier has no control over it, neither in the present time(1971) nor in the past time (1896), considering that he travels back to the past in search of a lost love. The time travel in the novel indicates a reflection about time irreversibility through an immersion into an imaginative world, exposing the intriguing feelings that strike the different historical subjects. / O romance Somewhere in Time (1975), do autor norte-americano Richard Matheson, apresenta o tempo como elemento de maior relevância no interior da construção narrativa, que transita entres os gêneros Fantasy e Ficção Científica. Tal elemento surge na obra por meio de várias perspectivas: como personagem, como parte da estrutura narrativa e, também, relacionado à questão musical, mais especificamente, às sinfonias do compositor Gustav Mahler. O enfoque principal deste trabalho é o estudo das categorias tempo e personagem na narrativa, sendo que o tempo é percebido como verdadeiro antagonista do herói, Richard Collier. Em sua batalha com tempo, a personagem Collier não tem controle sobre o tempo real, aquele no qual está imerso em 1971, nem do tempo passado em 1896, revestido pela aparência de presente. A viagem no tempo, proposta no romance, anuncia uma reflexão a respeito da irreversibilidade do tempo por meio de uma imersão em um mundo imaginativo, povoado pelos medos inerentes aos diferentes sujeitos históricos.

Traditional historical writing focuses on the cause and effect of human action, assuming that it is the historian's responsibility to recount the ebbs and flows of human progress. In the process of laying hold of the past as a narrative of human action, historical writing has developed the tendency to marginalise nature and undermine its power to influence the historical narrative. My investigation explores the fantastic in historical fantasy as a means of resisting historical writing's anthropocentrism. Historical fantasy uses fantastical elements to create counterfactual and alternative historical realities that have the potential to resist and undermine history's anthropocentric norm. My thesis examines four contemporary young adult historical fantasy trilogies that reimagine key turning points in history such as industrialisation, the American frontier, European imperialism, and World War I. They share the theme of retrieving and subverting anthropocentric discourses in the history of human development and thereby creating space for nature's presence and agency. My study finds that the fantastic is an effective means of subverting historical writing's anthropocentrism. But it also uncovers ambiguities and contradictions in historical fantasy's ecological revisionism, pointing to the idea that despite the fantastic's capacity for subversion, historical representations of nature cannot be separated from considerations of human identity and survival.

The thesis focuses on the comparative analysis of Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937) and two works which significantly influenced him: George MacDonald's Princess and the Goblin (1872) and Edith Nesbit's Enchanted Castle (1907). The first part of the thesis chronologically describes the development of English children's fantasy literature. The above-mentioned authors are characterized from the perspective of their life and work. The second and the main part focuses on the comparison of the discussed works, especially on the comparison of fantastic elements such as fairy-tale characters, a journey to the unknown, a fight against evil, magical objects and magic space (the castle, the forest, the abandoned landscape). This interpretation is based on Tolkien's concept of fairy tales and fantasy and Propp's analysis of fairy tales.

Si l’on peut faire remonter la naissance de la fantasy aux récits mythologiques et la rattacher aux contes populaires, la fantasy moderne n’a été reconnue qu’au début du XXe siècle. Venu de l’anglais imagination, le genre appartient au domaine de la littérature d ‘évasion, car il propose un « réenchantement » de notre monde.Marquée par de grands titres, tels que la trilogie du Seigneur des anneaux de J. R. R. Tolkien, la fantasy s’est ouverte à la littérature de jeunesse, notamment avec Harry Potter. Notre étude porte sur un corpus d’oeuvres marquantes de S. Audouin-Mamikonian, P. Bottero, B. Bottet, S. De Mari, N. Farmer, C. Paolini, M. Paver et E. Rodda, qui ont été publiées en France entre 2000 et 2006. Après avoir esquissé une typologie des sous-genres de la fantasy en la caractérisant par rapport aux autres littératures de l’imaginaire, il s’agit d’interroger les œuvres du corpus au niveau de la construction du héros et du monde dans lequel il évolue, d’étudier les phénomènes intertextuels et, notamment, comment le schéma narratif du conte est utilisé pour offrir à son lecteur un parcours quasi initiatique de l’adolescence et, enfin,de montrer comment la fantasy jeunesse en France est devenue un phénomène social et éditorial par l’intermédiaire des nouveaux outils de commercialisation / Although fantasy dates back to mythological tales and may be associated with folktales, modern fantasy has only been recognized since the beginning of the 20thcentury. According to its definition as “imaginative fiction”, the genre belongs to thefield of escapist literature since it provides a “re-enchantment” of our world.Highlighted by best-sellers, such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien,fantasy flourished in children’s literature especially with Harry Potter. Our study relieson a significant body of works written by S. Audouin-Mamikonian, P. Bottero,B. Bottet, S. Mari, N. Farmer, C. Paolini, M. Paver and E. Rodda and published in France between 2000 and 2006. After outlining a typology of the subgenres of fantasy by characterizing it in relation to the other types of speculative fiction, the study focuses on the works themselves, especially with regard to the construction of the hero and of the world he lives in with a view to analyzing intertextual phenomena, grasping notably how the narrative scheme of the tale is used to offer the reader some sort of initiation journey through adolescence and, lastly, to showing how youth fantasy in France has become a social and editorial phenomenon through innovative marketing tools

Nous nous intéresserons dans cette étude au lien entre la décroissance — mouvement pluriforme qui tire ses racines de l’écologie radicale — et cinq romans de fantasy contemporains : The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). Nous nous concentrerons sur ce qui nous semble être l’essence de la décroissance, à savoir, d’une part, le refus de considérer la surenchère comme une solution aux problèmes ou l’accumulation comme seule forme de bonheur, et, d’autre part, la diminution volontaire comme moyen d’améliorer la condition humaine.Plus précisément, nous étudierons la diminution de pouvoir, d’autorité et de savoir. Nous nous intéresserons à la représentation de ces trois concepts au travers des procédés narratifs et stylistiques, ainsi que des différentes icônes et figures qui les incarnent, et nous étudierons la façon dont ils mettent en scène une tension constante entre croissance et décroissance. Dans cette optique, le rôle du narrateur et du lecteur dans la création du monde fantastique aura une importance particulière, car il est le cœur même de l’interaction fertile entre savoir et autorité, qui reflète l’accession du protagoniste au pouvoir. C’est la spécificité du traitement de ces concepts par les outils propres à la fantasy et à la science fiction que nous nous attacherons à mettre en lumière. / This study will focus on the relation between degrowth — a multifaceted movement which takes its roots in deep ecology — and five fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings (J. R.R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). The focus will be on the essence of degrowth, viz., on the one hand, a denial of escalation as a solution and of hoarding as the only form of happiness,and on the other hand, a willing diminishing as a means to improve human condition. More specifically, it is the decrease in power, authority and knowledge that will be studied. The emphasis will be on the representation of these three notions through narrative and stylistic devices, as well as on the various icons and figures embodying them, in order to show the way they set up a constant tension between growth and degrowth. To that effect, the role of both narrator and reader in the creation of the fantastic world will be given due consideration, for it is at the very heart of the fruitful interaction between knowledge and authority, which reflects the protagonist’s rise to power. Thus, the specificity of the fantasy and science fiction approach to these notions will be highlighted.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Bibliography: leaves 72-73.

Originally presented as the author's thesis--Universität München, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.