Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media

Description

The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Mieville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Marek Oziewicz is Professor of Literacy Education and Sidney and Marguerite Henry Professor of Children's and Young Adult Literature at the College of Education and Human Development, Universty of Minnesota - Twin Cities, USA. He is the author of One Earth, One People (2008), which won the 2010 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies; Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction (2015); and 5 co-edited collections, and over 50 articles and book chapters. Brian Attebery is Professor of English at Idaho State University, USA and Editor or the Journal of the Fantastic in Art. His publications include Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2019) and Ursula K. Le Guin: Always Coming Home (2019). In 2019 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Fantasy at the University of Glasgow. Tereza Dedinova is Assistant Professor in the Department of Czech Literature, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. She has published on theory of the fantastic from the cognitive perspective, on the representation of the actual world in fantasy, and on the Czech fantastika.

Generally speaking, so-called fantasy and mythic literature tend to be regarded as enjoyable and yet too unrealistic to enable us to grasp the causes of the real dangers threatening our complex civilized world. This assumption is misleading if not discouraging, for as the numerous essays by notable scholars and artists in Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene demonstrate, fantasy and myth play an important role in helping us deal with the doom and gloom of climate change. Moreover, they provide extraordinary counter narratives that can help us reshape the world. This collection of essays is a wonderful breath of fresh optimistic air and reveals how the anticipatory imagination in contemporary myths and fantasy can help us resist the current ecological dilemma in which we find ourselves. * Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA * Mind opening. * Language and Ecology *