This study builds on the Uses and Gratifications body of knowledge as applies to motivations surrounding television use, specifically the cult television program Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Through the distribution of online survey it was found that respondents who read and/or wrote fanfiction were more likely to engage in the variable of parasocail relationships. One hypothesis was disregarded due to the invalidity of the variable. Through two research questions it was found that the variable of affinity was indicative of a viewer's involvement with the show. The second research question found only two marginally significant variables, personal identity and realism, with regard to the number of years one had been a fan of the show. Age was found to be significant in all the variables and was accounted for. / Department of Journalism

The topic of my thesis is conning in the Czech Republic. Conning stands for actions, which take place at conventions of fans of the fantasy genre called cons. Ethnographic study consist of two circuits. The first one focuses on cons, and their different aspects of realization, as well as services, including mechandising. The second on is dedicated to participants of this kind of event. The research focuses not only on their activity at conventions, but also reflects the consumption of the genre and partecipation of related activities. The theoretical part was based on the specialist literature. Theoretical bases served to define research questions. Methods used for data collection include participant observation, semi-structured ethnographic interviews, analysis of documents, informal and unstructured ethnographic interviews and questionnaires. Timeframe for data collection is the period from June 2015 to April 2016. For analysis were used the grounded theory principles, namely open and axial coding. The output is an paradigmatic model. Research identifies characteristic elements of conning in the Czech Republic, differences between domestic and foreign cons and experience of the participants. Also illustrates the role of a fantasy genre fiction in the life of participants, and their perception of...

Where the Dead Remain is a murder mystery set in a Post-Katrina New Orleans where the gods, magic and monsters of various world mythologies actually exist. The story follows a week in the life of Jude Duboisson, a once magician who is struggling with the loss of his magic and the life he had known in the wake of the storm, as he is pulled out of his torpor and into the affairs of the mighty once again. He is tasked with discovering who murdered Dodge Renaud, the fortune god of New Orleans. What he discovers, though, are some surprising truths about the fundamental nature of things: about loss, about New Orleans, and about himself.

The prophecies in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series are unclear and often appear to have multiple possible fulfillments, or none at all. In addition, some of these prophesied events occur before they are introduced, which further contributes to the lack of clarity in interpreting them. My thesis will discuss the methods by which Martin offers readers clues to a prophecy’s fulfillment and argue that Martin’s use of these imprecise prophecies challenges high fantasy tropes about prophecies.

Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, published in 1936, has been widely read in the last eighty years and has influenced significant authors in the field of fantasy, yet it has been examined in just three critical studies in that time. This study examines Finney's novel as an epistemological fantasy, a heretofore undefined term that precipitates an epistemological crisis of knowing and certainty. The novel opens a way for fantasy literature to establish itself in a Modernist landscape by foregrounding the marvelous and extraordinary knowledge that lies just outside the realm of human experience. Finney presents Dr. Lao's circus as a surrogate model of success, and while many of the characters in the novel are unable to accept the truth offered them by the beings of fantasy, the author uses their experiences to satirize the complacencies he witnessed upon returning to America from the Far East in the 1930s. / by Daniel B. Creed. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This study examines the social organization of Gaiscíoch, a large online gaming community that exists within the simulated world of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It provides an ethnographic account of an online gaming community that is open to any player without skill or time commitment requirements, but still maintains high status within the game world. This project identifies eight elements that make this inclusive, friendly, and casual community successful in virtual worlds that tend to be dominated by communities that have a competitive, strict, and exclusive approach to online gaming (social interaction, code of values, leadership, rank system, events, community building, population size, gameplay). Lastly, this project briefly inquires about the nature of the border between the virtual and the physical and establishes that gamers can be considered pseudo-border-inhabitants that are in control of the community they place adjacent to them in the cyber world. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study is to analyze two works within the fantasy and the fantastic genre, Eragon by Christopher Paolini and Border by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and how ideas of race are expressed in either work. This study will also discuss how racial elements in fantasy can be utilized in education, both to problematize those ideas as well as how they can be used as a resource to gain some new perspectives from a didactic perspective. This study aims to answer the following question formulations: How does either work express racial ideas? What similarities and differences can be found in their expressions of race? How can these racial ideas be problematized and used as a resource from a didactic perspective? Critique of ideology is the overarching method, while the analytic methods used are close reading and comparative analysis. The theory behind the study is how race are constructed from a norm, humans, and how other races in a fantastical setting differ from this norm by being directly compared to the norm. This also dictates what constitutes as a human or “other”, as well as were leakage can be found in the norms. The conclusion of this study is that both of these works being analyzed shows different aspects of how fantasy and the fantastical can be used in education when it comes to the racial ideas, one upholds the racial ideas of the past and the other uses those same ideas for subversion. In education, works within the fantasy and the fantastical genre can be utilized in two different ways. The first is to problematize and create awareness of the racial ideas in fantasy literature, and the second is to use fantasy works that subverts racial ideas in order to deconstruct and gain a new understanding of race and racism in our own world.

Song of Ice and Fire is unarguably one of the most popular fantasy series of all time. Notwithstanding its success, the series has only recently begun to be analyzed critically. George R.R. Martin’s books are often celebrated for breaking many of the tropes common in fantasy literature. Despite this, the series is nonetheless a product of a genre that has been shaped by white, male authors. Using such prominent postcolonial scholars as Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Albert Memmi, I analyze the five published books of Martin’s series. I argue that although Martin seems to be aware of the theoretical background of postcolonial studies and attempts to present a story sensitive to issues of colonization, the book series fails to present a Western representation of the East outside of orientalist stereotypes and narratives that reinforce imperialism. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Judith Gautier caresse un vif intérêt pour les temps anciens et le monde inconnu. Parmi toutes les contrées lointaines, c’est en Chine qu’elle conçoit son rêve le plus charmant et son monde intime le plus merveilleux. La Chine dans son ensemble la séduit, répondant à la fois à sa curiosité envers l’Antiquité et à son désir de décrypter des documents indéchiffrables. C’est de là qu’elle a tiré ses meilleures inspirations pour ses créations littéraires. Basée sur les écrits de Judith Gautier sur la Chine, d’une part, et sur leurs sources d’inspiration, d’autre part, notre thèse projette d’examiner les spécificités rêvées de la Chine de l’écrivaine, de mesurer la distance entre son art imaginatif et la situation réelle de ce pays et de repérer les éventuels facteurs ayant contribué à la formation de son style. Les œuvres de Judith Gautier constituent un grand terrain d’exploitation, dont l’intérêt de la recherche est caractérisé par sa fécondité, présentant une quantité considérable de sujets à découvrir, par son érudition, qui englobe une large dimension culturelle de l’Orient à l’Occident, ainsi que par sa préférence de la liberté, qui entraîne des choix arbitraires quant aux traductions et aux adaptations. La découverte de la vie et des œuvres de Judith Gautier est un voyage formidable, où sont manifestés des idées inédites, des images inconnues et des horizons nouveaux et insolites. / Judith Gautier takes a keen interest in the ancient times and the unknown world. Among all the distant lands, it is in China that she conceives her most charming dream and her most wonderful intimate world. China as a whole seduces her, responding to her curiosity towards antiquity and her desire to decipher indecipherable documents. The culture of this country gives Judith Gautier a lot of inspirations for her literary creations. Our thesis plans to research the characteristics of Judith Gautier’s fantasy vision of China and measure the distance between her imaginative art and the actual situation of this country. We plan to find the possible factors that contributed to the formation of her style and the sources which gave her inspirations. The works of Judith Gautier constitute a large field to be explored. They present a considerable number of subjects to be discovered thanks to the fertility of the author and encompass a large cultural dimension from the East to the West. Besides, Judith Gautier’s preference for the freedom leads to her arbitrary choices of translations and adaptations. The discovery of her life and her works is a wonderful journey, where new ideas and unknown images are revealed.

It is a great deficit to Fantasy scholarship that Lord Dunsany has remained largely ignored. Despite the lack of critical attention Lord Dunsany's work has received at the hands of critics, his fiction has been immensely important to other Fantasy authors. Dunsany's prose is highly stylized and is an intricate aspect of his world building. While many critics agree that Dunsany's prose style is unique and masterful, no detailed analysis of it exists. This study focuses primarily on Dunsany's prose style in The King of Elfland's Daughter, widely agreed to be Dunsany's finest novel, and certainly characteristic of his early fiction writing. I then discuss Dunsany's profound influence on J.R.R. Tolkien's critical and fictional work. Both authors embrace Dryden's "fairy way of writing" within their respective works, embracing the old and romantic, as well as nature's creations, as precious treasures in our realm and in the imaginative realm of Faery. / by Skye T. Cervone. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.