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The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers
to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is
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Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
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All My MothersTamara J Rutledge (8740851) 24 April 2020 (has links)
All My Mothers came to me as the story of a child trying to grasp the cruelty of the world through understanding her murdered mother and, later, her extended family of mothers. When I decided to add chapters from the mother’s point of view, I realized that she had the same struggle and so I wanted to parallel their journeys—the journey of a mother and daughter, or two daughters, really—in order to show the way that this family passes on its pain. All this takes place in what J. R. R. Tolkien called a secondary world, a term that we still use to describe fantasy that takes place in a world other than this one. The depth of worldbuilding that comes with this speculative genre places power in the writer’s hands to imagine radically feminist worlds or examine power, structures, and beliefs. I also knew I wanted to create societies and characters that are queer. Science fiction and fantasy are uniquely positioned to explore different relationship structures and ways of loving as depicted in feminist classics like Ursula K. LeGuin’s <i>The Left Hand of Darkness</i> or Octavia Butler’s <i>Dawn</i>. In my novel, all three immortal peoples are ace, agender or genderfluid, and reproduce asexually. While race is not constructed the same way in this world, most of the immortals have shades of dark skin because I think it is powerful to imagine BIPOC as ageless beings with the agency to shape their futures. Given the story’s themes of creation, destruction, and environmental apocalypse, I think it’s important to see queer femmes saving their worlds, healing their families, and building alliances.
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Inexhaustible Magic: Folklore as World Building in Harry PotterCastleman, Samantha G 01 April 2017 (has links)
The practice of secondary world building, the creation of a fantasy realm with its own unique laws and systems has long been a tradition within the genre of fantasy writing. In many notable cases, such as those publications by J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, folklore exhibited in the world of the reader has been specifically used not only to construct these fantasy realms, but to add depth and believability to their presentation. The universe of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series demonstrates this same practice of folklore-as-world-building, yet her construction does much more than just create a fantasy realm. By using both folklore which predates her writing as well as created elements which while unique to her secondary world specifically reflect the world of the reader, Rowling is able to create a fantasy realm which is highly political, complex and multivocal, yet still accessible to young readers through its familiarity. Specifically through her use of cryptids, belief representation, and folk narratives both invented and recontextualized, Rowling is able to juxtapose her fantasy universe to the real-world of the reader, in effect inventing a believable secondary world but also demonstrating to young readers the ways in which her writing should be interpreted.
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The State of Critical Theory in Fantastic LiteratureJanuary 2019 (has links)
abstract: The study of genre literature in general, and fantasy or fairy tale literature in particular, by its very nature, falls outside the normal course of literary theory. This paper evaluates various approaches taken to create a framework within which scholarly research and evaluation of these types of genre literature might occur. This is done applying Secondary World theory to better-established literary foci, such as psychological analysis and monster theory while still respecting the premises posited in traditional literary inquiry. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2019
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The world is changing: ethics and genre development in three twentieth-century high fantasies.Le Lievre, Kerrie Anne January 2004 (has links)
This thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts published between 1954 and 2001: J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'Earthsea' cycle and Patricia A. McKillip’s 'The Riddle-Master’s Game'. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis. Using theories of literary ecology and narrative paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text’s use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved. An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world. I argue that the texts’ dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2004
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The world is changing: ethics and genre development in three twentieth-century high fantasies.Le Lievre, Kerrie Anne January 2004 (has links)
This thesis examines three genre high fantasy texts published between 1954 and 2001: J. R. R. Tolkien’s 'The Lord of the Rings', Ursula K. Le Guin’s 'Earthsea' cycle and Patricia A. McKillip’s 'The Riddle-Master’s Game'. The emphasis is on examining how the three texts use a common set of structures to articulate a developing argument about forms of human engagement with the physical world in the face of environmental crisis. Using theories of literary ecology and narrative paradigm, I examine the common structure shared by the three high fantasies and the weight of ethical implications it carries. The texts position the transcendent impulse of the mode of tragedy, and the behaviour it generates, as the source of crisis, and posit as a solution to the problem the integrative ethic characteristic of the comedic mode. They argue that a transition between these two ethics is necessary for the continued survival of the Secondary World. This thesis examines each text’s use of narrative paradigm to articulate methods by which this ethical transition may be achieved. An argumentative trend is documented across the three fantasies through the representation of situation, problem and solution. In each text, as the Secondary World becomes more completely a closed physical system, the source of the solution to the problem caused by the transcendent presence and the achievement of ethical transition are both relocated within the control of human actors. The three fantasies express a gradual movement toward the acceptance of not only human responsibility for, but the necessity for action to remedy, the damaged state of the world. I argue that the texts’ dominant concern is with the human relationship with and to context. Indeed, I argue that the three fantasies reflect the developing understanding of the human role in not only precipitating, but responding to, environmental crisis, and may function as both a reflection of and an intervention in that crisis. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2004
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The Secret World of Harry Potter : The Literary Laws of Fantasy Applied to the Novels by J. K. RowlingWatts, Robin January 2007 (has links)
<p>My intentions with this essay has been to examine the World in which the story of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter takes place, the structure, narrative and restrictions, in order to place the suite of novels in the tradition of the Fantasy genre. Since the release of the first book Harry Potter has become a household name, possibly more than any other contemporary literature written for children. Various readings concerning gender, etymological, linguistic aspects and so forth have been done, and in most cases the books are placed in the genre of Fantasy without distinguishing what in fact makes the novels Fantasy. I wanted to see which specific sectors of the books that place them in the genre, and, assuming that it would in fact fit into the Fantasy genre, in which ways it diverges from the tradition of the genre in means of the structure of the world/s of the story. I also looked at the faults in the logic within the novels to see if the inconsistencies in the rules of the world have an impact on the agency of the story.</p><p>I found the novels to be a part of the fantasy tradition, not only by having many intertextual relations and similar features to other fantasy-novels but also in the fundament of the story, its basic conditions such as the supernatural elements and the hidden places in the world of the books. The minor inconstancies that I found where to small to disrupt the narrative, and the fact that some of the aspects of the books drift slightly away from the logic of the world within the story have reasonable explanations such as making the story easier to relate to.</p>
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The Secret World of Harry Potter : The Literary Laws of Fantasy Applied to the Novels by J. K. RowlingWatts, Robin January 2007 (has links)
My intentions with this essay has been to examine the World in which the story of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter takes place, the structure, narrative and restrictions, in order to place the suite of novels in the tradition of the Fantasy genre. Since the release of the first book Harry Potter has become a household name, possibly more than any other contemporary literature written for children. Various readings concerning gender, etymological, linguistic aspects and so forth have been done, and in most cases the books are placed in the genre of Fantasy without distinguishing what in fact makes the novels Fantasy. I wanted to see which specific sectors of the books that place them in the genre, and, assuming that it would in fact fit into the Fantasy genre, in which ways it diverges from the tradition of the genre in means of the structure of the world/s of the story. I also looked at the faults in the logic within the novels to see if the inconsistencies in the rules of the world have an impact on the agency of the story. I found the novels to be a part of the fantasy tradition, not only by having many intertextual relations and similar features to other fantasy-novels but also in the fundament of the story, its basic conditions such as the supernatural elements and the hidden places in the world of the books. The minor inconstancies that I found where to small to disrupt the narrative, and the fact that some of the aspects of the books drift slightly away from the logic of the world within the story have reasonable explanations such as making the story easier to relate to.
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Terry Pratchett and the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy : death, war and laughterJoubert, Michelle Anne January 2013 (has links)
The aim of this dissertation was to critically analyse Terry Pratchett’s Johnny
Maxwell trilogy in terms of three areas, namely Pratchett’s use of various fantasy techniques;
how comedy and satire function as distancing mechanisms; and how fantasy and comedy
function in accordance with Erikson’s and Bettelheim’s theories concerning identity
formation in adolescent and child readers. The primary aim of this dissertation was therefore
to provide a literary reading of Pratchett’s trilogy, Only You Can Save Mankind (1992),
Johnny and the Dead (1993) and Johnny and the Bomb (1996). However, it also
acknowledges the possible didactic and developmental benefits of the books. The trilogy is entertaining, exciting, witty and child-friendly (Baldry cited in Butler,
James and Mendlesohn, 2004:41), but it is also clear that Pratchett endeavours to challenge
his child readers by presenting everyday situations from foreign and unusual perspectives.
This dissertation argues that, as Baldry states, Pratchett ‘expands the thinking of his young
readers with new ideas or unconventional ways of looking at familiar ideas’ which will
ultimately help them consider their own lives in alternative and perhaps even more
meaningful ways (quoted in Butler, James and Mendlesohn, 2004:41).
The idea of ‘distancing techniques’ is vital for this study, because it proposes that
readers can be transported from their Primary Realities (in which they live and function on a
daily basis) into Secondary Realities or worlds which are unlike the Primary Reality in form
and composition, but not unlike them in the way they function. Once this removal has taken
place, bibliotherapists argue that readers are able to look back upon their primary world with new insight into their sense of industry and identity and also into the way their primary reality
functions and the way they function within it. J.R.R. Tolkien (1985:35) explains that ‘…fact
becomes that which is manipulated by the fantasy writer to produce a keener perception of
the primary world and a greater ability to survive in it’.
Owing to Pratchett’s specific comic brand of fantasy, a discussion of his comic and
satiric techniques is also presented. Part of this discussion again concentrates on the ability of
comedy to act as a distancing mechanism, while another discusses how Pratchett uses
comedy to satirise certain aspects of society. As Bergson (1911:17) states in his book,
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, laughter is a way of ‘correcting men’s
manners’. Pratchett thus makes use of various comic techniques to mock and ridicule certain
features of society, such as its obsession with television, its materialism, or its obsession with
computer games.
This research is important as the fantasy genre is often considered to be mere popular
fiction, to which parents and school teachers are frequently averse. However, with the
increase in sales of fantasy works over the past decade, especially in adolescent and
children’s fantasy, study of the genre and its possible influence on readers is becoming
increasingly necessary. This dissertation undertakes to show that fantasy works can be both
complex and satisfying literary works while they also have a positive influence on child
readers. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / English / unrestricted
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Cesta tam a zpět, zdařilý život, sociální práce / There and back again, successful life, social workSKALICKÁ, Terezie January 2015 (has links)
This work describes a special kind of story about the journey there and back again or journey to gain experience. The nature of this narrative is given by the presence of several key points: the existence of primary and secondary world, wandering throughout secondary world, the transformation of a hero and a reader, homecoming. Presented definition of the story is the starting point from which are being searched connections with the professional disciplines of social work and ethics. In social work the diagram of these trips back and forth presents acquiring an expertise in various scientific fields. For plane of ethics it is particularly significant credibility of the moment from this journey back and forth when the story of the hero and the reader becomes a good (or bad) story positive or negative.
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Secondary World: The Limits of LudonarrativeDannelly, David 01 January 2014 (has links)
Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative is a series of short narrative animations that are a theoretical treatise on the limitations of western storytelling in video games. The series covers specific topics relating to film theory, game design and art theory: specifically those associated with Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin and Andy Clark. The use of imagery, editing and presentation is intended to physically represent an extension of myself and my thinking process and which are united through the common thread of my personal feelings, thoughts and experiences in the digital age.
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