Elements Of Fantasy Research Articles

Virtual Recentralization: Pilgrimage as Social Imaginary in the Demilitarized Islands between China and Taiwan

AbstractDrawing on ethnography from Mazu, a group of demilitarized islands between China and Taiwan, this article argues that contemporary pilgrimage is an imaginative work that generates hope and potentialities for the increasingly marginalized islanders. I explore the imaginative qualities of the rituals, qualities that I refer to collectively as “virtual recentralization.” “Recentralization” connotes the islanders' longing to regain their Cold War status as the focal point between China and Taiwan, even though the desired goal can only be “virtual” as cross-strait tensions continue to diminish. These pilgrimages, with their eclectic, improvisatory, and novel forms, differ from traditional pilgrimages in important ways: rather than transmitting permanent and solid religious values, they are oriented towards performance and are imbued with elements of fiction and fantasy. They are the means by which the Mazu islanders, in this neoliberal era, imagine their future, reconfigure political, economic, and religious space, and forge new connections between China, Taiwan, and even the wider world.

Adaptation of Hikayat Hang Tuah in Children's Literature

Hang Tuah is a character in the epic Hikayat Hang Tuah which has become the pride of Malay Literature. The epic, and especially the protagonist of the epic, Hang Tuah, have been much discussed. This is also the case where children’s literature is concerned, as the Hikayat Hang Tuah has attracted the attention of Malaysian authors to produce adaptations of stories from this epic. The stories linked to the character of Hang Tuah contain many elements of fantasy which makes them suitable for adaptation as children’s literature. Establishing what types of adaptations have been made of these stories forms the core of this study. Also, the acceptance of Hang Tuah as a hero of the Malays has been challenged by movements, especially in social realism. As a result, the character of Hang Jebat has become accepted as a heroic figure instead. However, whether or not social realism has influenced adaptations done for children, and whether there has been a shift in the figure of hero as a result of social realism are still unanswered questions which this study addresses. This study has found that adaptations of stories about Hang Tuah for children are mainly partial adaptations, and that the stories chosen for adaptation are especially those containing strong elements of fantasy. Illustrations are also an element in these partial adaptations. The study has found no trace of the influence of social realism in the adaptations. Hang Tuah is still depicted as a heroic figure while Hang Jebat continues to be depicted as the traitor. Keywords: children’s literature, Hang Tuah, adaptations, social realism, illustrations

Popularizing Epic Narrative in George R.r. Martin's a Game of Thrones

This research is intended to show the sustainability of epic in latest years of human history through the most phenomenal fantasy in American literature, A Game of Thrones . Along with the capability of human beings in thinking dearly and sensibly, it is commonsensical that people tend to free themselves from irrationality. The reality shows, however, that the existence of epic fantasy still has power in appealing audiences or readers. This is the case with A Game of Thrones written by George RR Martin who was given the award of One of The Most Influential People in 2011 by Time magazine. This qualitative march, using genre approach, finds out that in order to be compatible with today's society , an epic seen in A Game of Thrones, which is commonly known as a story centering on the legendary hero and his heroic deed in oral folk tradition, keeps its power as an epic fantasy narrative through certain archetypes and formulas. Through genre analysis using semiotic approach, the research brings about conclusions that the elements of high fantasy, elements built through rational representation, and a smart combination of convention and invention brings about its popularity. It is also concluded that there is a close relationship between the myth and the mode of people living even in the most modern context.

POPULARIZING EPIC NARRATIVE IN GEORGE R.R. MARTIN'S A GAME OF THRONES

This research is intended to show the sustainability of epic in latest years of human history through the most phenomenal fantasy in American literature, A Game of Thrones . Along with the capability of human beings in thinking dearly and sensibly, it is commonsensical that people tend to free themselves from irrationality. The reality shows, however, that the existence of epic fantasy still has power in appealing audiences or readers. This is the case with A Game of Thrones written by George RR Martin who was given the award of One of The Most Influential People in 2011 by Time magazine. This qualitative march, using genre approach, finds out that in order to be compatible with today's society , an epic seen in A Game of Thrones, which is commonly known as a story centering on the legendary hero and his heroic deed in oral folk tradition, keeps its power as an epic fantasy narrative through certain archetypes and formulas. Through genre analysis using semiotic approach, the research brings about conclusions that the elements of high fantasy, elements built through rational representation, and a smart combination of convention and invention brings about its popularity. It is also concluded that there is a close relationship between the myth and the mode of people living even in the most modern context.

Seductions of the “Honor Crime”

The “honor crime” poses perhaps more starkly than any other contemporary cultural-legal category the dilemmas of feminist scholarship and rights activism in a transnational world. Marked as a culturally specific form of violence and given a special and stigmatizing association with Muslims, especially after the 1990s, the honor crime does significant political work in the world today. Through an examination of popular literature, human rights reports, and anthropological and sociological studies, this article uncovers the forces that produce and maintain this category of spectacular cultural violence; the elements of popular fantasy that animate it; the forms of modern state and transnational power the category occludes; and the ahistorical and divisive civilizational thinking it encourages. Drawing both on ethnography from one Egyptian Bedouin community in which honor is a key moral value and on the critical analysis of diverse representations of the honor crime in Germany, Sweden, Palestine, Turkey, Jordan, and elsewhere, the author explores how the seductive power of the honor crime, mixing sexual titillation and moral horror, and its truly polymorphous interpretive capacity have enabled it to emerge as a robust category implicated in projects that include the policing and exclusions of immigrants; nation-states' disciplinary penetration of rural and urban subaltern communities; dominance by specific national, ethnic, or class groups; manipulation of liberal values in the service of assertions of Western superiority; and justifications of international intervention and transnational governance in the name of women's rights, including by feminists.

What is Fantasy?

What is Fantasy? Brian Laetz and Joshua J. Johnston Wizards, elves, dragons, and trolls—this is certainly the stuff of fantasy, populating the fictions of such giants as Tolkien, no less than the juvenilia of many aspiring writers. However, it is much easier to identify typical elements of fantasy, than it is to understand the category of fantasy itself. There can be little doubt that, in practice, the genre is pretty well defined, concretely manifesting itself in the shelves reserved for it in video shops and bookstores. But stating why a work belongs on these shelves, rather than those in the near vicinity, such as horror and science fiction, or those more remote, like plain old fiction, presents a real challenge. Certainly, a mere few feet could separate fantasy from the other shelves, but the conceptual distance those feet represent appears great indeed. What, if anything, distinguishes this genre from other categories of mass art. In other words, what is fantasy? To begin, fantasy is a transmedia genre, since there are fantasy novels and movies, for instance, as is illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga and its recent cinematic adaptation. It is interesting to note that fantasy includes works from other media as well, such as paintings, which often accompany fantasy narratives, like Frank Frazetta's recognizable illustrations for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. Forms of entertainment are also affiliated with the genre, such as role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, though one might balk at considering such things even forms of mass art? Nonetheless, despite the variety of media and entertainments associated with fantasy, [End Page 161] narratives occupy a fundamental place within the genre. For paintings, drawings, and the like are only recognizably fantastic given some narrative background that tells us what wizards, trolls, and dragons look like.1 Plausibly, it is what allows us to see that a drawing depicts an elf, for example, rather than a child with odd pointy ears. Thus, even if some works of fantasy are, strictly speaking, non-narrative, fantastic narratives remain fundamental, since these other works would not be classified as fantasy without them. This warrants initially setting aside things like fantasy games and paintings to focus on narratives. What, precisely, makes a narrative fantastic? First, fantastic narratives are essentially fictional. For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fiction, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent, quite unlike, say, true crime. And it must be stressed that this point should be compatible with any theory of fiction. Second, the sort of things that can make a work fantastic, like wizards and dragons, must be prominent in the work—they cannot be minor details. For example, had there been a two-minute scene in Spartacus in which someone cast a spell, the scene would have been fantastic, but ultimately the movie would not be classified any differently; you would still find it on the drama shelf. Moreover, this condition is not peculiar to fantasy.2 For instance, no one who has suffered through a Steven Seagal film would seriously classify it as romance or even action-romance, simply because it has a minor romantic subplot. Fantasy is no different from any other genre in this regard: whatever features define a genre must be prominent in a work in order for it to belong to the relevant genre. Third, the sort of content that can make a work fantastic must not solely be viewed as symbols for things that are not fantastic. In other words, these elements cannot just be taken as allegorical.3 This alone would seem to disqualify George Orwell's Animal Farm from the genre, since most read the intelligent animals as merely symbols portraying various factions in communist Russia. It should be noted that the actual intentions of the author probably matter little here. For example, even if scholars discovered that Tolkien merely intended the Middle Earth saga as an elaborate allegory, it would remain fantasy; few would be tempted to move the books to another shelf. Fourth, the relevant content must not solely be mocked or lampooned within the work.4 This is necessary...

Raising the Wind

Raising the Wind Sean Latham The opening essay in this issue of JJQ argues that editors, biographers, and textual scholars have been too quick to attribute a rather dubious piece of newspaper writing to Joyce. In "An Emendation to the Joycean Canon: The Last Hurrah for 'Politics and Cattle Disease,'" Terence Matthews meticulously argues that we have long been mistaken in our belief that Joyce actually published a short article on foot-and-mouth disease in the 10 September 1912 issue of The Freeman's Journal. Matthews makes a measured assessment of the available textual, historical, and documentary evidence, focusing on the newspaper itself and its role in the debates about cattle disease in Ireland. The result is a convincing claim that editors of both James Joyce: The Critical Writings and James Joyce: Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing were too quick to include this piece based upon some rather thin external evidence from Stanislaus Joyce. Although such a discovery does not go to the heart of the canon, it nevertheless reminds us that textual scholarship can still profitably attend to questions of genesis as well as genetics. This opening essay is followed by a pair of studies which each reflect in quite different ways on the virtual worlds created in and around Joyce's written texts. In "Possible Worlds Theory and the Fantasy Universe of Finnegans Wake," Margot Norris offers a daring and inventive new way for venturing into Joyce's most challenging work. Using the narratological tools of possible-worlds theory, she interrogates "the Wake's narrative and fictional operation" by rigorously analyzing the ways in which the book alternatively complies with and violates generic textual codes. Using chapter I.i. as a kind of laboratory, she explores how Joyce integrates elements of fantasy, actuality, and possibility to test the relationship between text and world. As a result, we are led beyond language and plot into the Wake's deep yet riven narrative structures. In "Ulysses on Web 2.0: Towards a Hypermedia Parallax Engine," Mark C. Marino takes us from possible worlds to virtual ones. Working at the intersection of Joyce criticism and the digital humanities, he meditates on the idea of an interface while speculating about the ways in which Ulysses might be remediated as a digital object. Following up on the wide-ranging discussions which accompanied Michael Groden's now stalled Hypermedia Ulysses, he focuses, in particular, on the problems of constraint and control. As he notes, "If [End Page 421] Ulysses solicits hypertext, the response to the solicitation threatens to be a nightmarish gathering, an onslaught of commentary, a vortex of links, a perversion, a black hole. What is worse, such a project might stabilize, cite, and annotate the text to death." These problems are themselves not unique; indeed, they are the same ones faced by any interface designer working either with the static structure of the printed page or the floating windows of the personal computer. Such decisions, however, have a profound effect upon the reception and circulation of a text, and Marino concludes by imagining a collaborative model of interface and commentary—a WikiUlysses or Joyce 2.0—in which user-generated editorial content can be organized yet prevented from stabilizing the text. The model he suggests is rich with possibility, but its application to Ulysses remains sadly stymied by copyright law, though prototypes based on Dubliners and A Portrait remain a rich possibility. The final pair of essays pursue very different ends, though intersect in quite surprising ways in their reflections on the economy and epistemology of love. In "Getting Past No in 'Scylla and Charybdis,'" John Gordon transforms a small, even inconsequential scene in Ulysses—Stephen's confession that he does not believe his own theory about Shakespeare—into the resonant center of the entire book. This simple "no," he argues, is a "wound of doubt," a generative "not yet" which ripples across and even beyond the text to entwine Bloom and Molly every bit as tightly as it does Joyce and Nora, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. Ulysses, he contends in this elegant reading, is founded on a vortex of doubt and uncertainty created by an open question about love...

Nietzsche, Borges, García Márquez on the Art of Memory and Forgetting

The narrator of Borges's tale the Memorious quotes in the opening paragraph strange interpretation of Funes as precursor to the Nietzschean Superman: a vernacular and rustic Zarathustra. (1) Nothing could be further from the Superman, or from Zarathustra, than the paralytic Funes doomed to die young of congestion although the loose form in which Nietzschean ideas circulated in the early twentieth century makes hard to judge the possibly intended significance behind such reference. One possibility is that is piece of authorial coat-trailing through which Borges secretly both acknowledges and obfuscates the true source of the tale. For quite different text, Nietzsche's early essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, makes use of thought experiment which strikingly encompasses all the key elements of Borges's philosophical fantasy. Indeed, is surely too close to the tale for comfort unless is Borgesian treble-bluff, game in which the reader is to appreciate the directness of the steal: Imagine the extremest possible example of man who did not possess the power of forgetting at all and who was thus condemned to see everywhere state of becoming: such man would no longer believe in his own being, would no longer believe in himself, would see everything flowing asunder in moving points and would lose himself in this stream of becoming: like true pupil of Heraclitus, he would in the end hardly dare to raise finger. Forgetting is essential to action of any kind, just as not only light but darkness too is essential for the life of everything organic. A man who wanted to feel historically through and through would be like one forcibly deprived of sleep, or an animal that had to live only by rumination and ever repeated rumination. Thus is possible to live almost without memory, and to live happily moreover, as the animal demonstrates; but is altogether impossible to live at all without forgetting. Or, to express my theme even more simply: there is degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the living thing, whether this living thing be man or people or culture. (Nietzsche's italics) (2) Borges's narrative redisposes the elements here: while Funes, for example, is ostensibly paralysed by his accident, the reader can readily see in this the symbol of his inner condition as spelt out by Nietzsche. The literally inconceivable weight of experiential specificity would be crushing, and is difficult to see how Funes, with his incapacity for general ideas, could even speak. At purely pragmatic level Funes's symbolically intrinsic paralysis has to appear with an apparent externality in order to allow the character to be mobilized within the narrative. The most crucial connection, however, lies in the linking of memory and insomnia. When in common parlance defer decision by saying that we will sleep on it the expression may be taken as merely dead metaphor indicating delay. But if psychic activity continues significantly during sleep, as may be obscurely evidenced by dreaming, then sleep may play greater and more active part in the process of decision than the consciousness is able to recognize or control. In this connection is noteworthy that Borges and his narrator build the story in stages which act as analytic layers spelling out the significance of his condition. Even before acquiring his extraordinary memory, he was locally famous as the chronometrical Funes, able to give the exact time at any moment. Already, he seems to lack human sense of time, and in way that is pregnantly suggestive for the function of the narrative in which he appears. For if one were to ask: Can clock tell the time? the question would have two answers corresponding to the different meanings of tell. …

Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review

Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review

Secret Spaces of Childhood (review)

Reviewed by: Secret Spaces of Childhood James Holt McGavran Jr. (bio) Secret Spaces of Childhood. Ed. Elizabeth Goodenough. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003 A literary critic recounts childhood scenes of sexual humiliation; a Harvard zoologist writes that, as a boy, he "sought little Edens in the forests of Alabama and northern Florida"; a novelist confesses the feelings of dislocation and pain she experienced at age five when her baby brother was born; an artist who read Verne, Tolkien, and The Swiss Family Robinson to escape an unhappy childhood creates a found-object sculpture in a silver box which he entitles "Einstein's Brain": these are just a few segments of Elizabeth Goodenough's intriguing anthology Secret Spaces of Childhood. Based on an art exhibit of the same name held at the University of Michigan in 1998, which Goodenough co-curated with Larry Cressman, the book includes, in addition to photographs of the artwork, thirty-four brief autobiographical vignettes, five longer memoir essays, eleven poems, four short stories, and eight essays in literary criticism. Critic U. C. Knoepflmacher, zoologist Edward O. Wilson, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, artist Eugene Provenzo, editor Goodenough, and the scores of other contributors all help, paradoxically, to unify this remarkably diverse book because, as Goodenough says, all contributions "show that, however humble, our first getaways and solo vantage points live on in memory and imagination" and "urge us to preserve sanctuaries for free play and to consider issues of environmental justice" (4). Thus all emphasize the necessity of free and unencumbered interaction between the internal and external lives of childhood. By its very existence the book also argues for the tearing down of entrenched academic barriers between the sciences and the humanities, between the scholarly and the creative sides of our minds, and between our adult and child selves. Some readers—this reviewer for one—find such demolition liberating and empowering; others, however, may find it naive or trivializing. Because most of us get paid to be teachers and scholar-critics, most will find the critical articles of particular interest. What commentator Margaret Price says of the visual artists in the "Secret Spaces" art exhibit may also be applied to these articles: Few, if any, . . . romanticize the notion of childhood and its secret spaces. Each work seems acutely aware of the hazards of being a child. Sometimes a secret space is a refuge from cruelty or danger. Sometimes it represents a refuge from the danger of becoming an adult oneself. ("Negotiating Boundaries, Regenerating Ruins: The 'Secret Spaces of Childhood' Exhibition" 148) [End Page 368] The most complex and striking of the articles is Adrienne Kertzer's "Like a Fable, Not a Pretty Picture: Holocaust Representation in Roberto Benigni and Anita Lobel." Kerzer recognizes the particular artistic and moral issues involved in any attempt to represent the Holocaust to children, understands survivor guilt, and sympathizes with Lobel's "determination to separate her Holocaust memories from the aesthetic work of her adult life" (170). Kertzer is most impressive when she bravely defends Benigni for introducing into his film, Life Is Beautiful, elements of comedy and fantasy which have aroused moral outrage in many viewers. She argues that it is because of the fantasies and the rescue narrative that Guido teaches his son Giosue in the death camp that Giosue is able to create his own story and live free in his mind as an adult: "This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made for me" (qtd. in Goodenough 172). These "strategies of representation [are] familiar in children's literature" but not, of course, in Holocaust literature (172). The fantasies are lies with regard to the almost unimaginable realities of mass extermination—the realities Lobel witnessed and reeled away from, the realities which, in the material sense, Giosue escaped not because of stories but entirely by accident. But the fantasies also pay tribute to the unique power of story to create hope—hope for better selves and a better world. Two other articles in the collection, by Joan W. Bios and Karein K. Goertz, also deal with Holocaust narrative through study of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Three more articles focus on...

Harry Potter (II): Intertekstualiteit en literêre genres in die reeks

This article explores the intrinsic criteria that are applied to discover the literary value of the Harry Potter texts. The aim of the article is to equip educators of Afrikaans in the intermediate and senior school phases with background knowledge by providing an overview of discussions and commentaries on the literary genres in which these texts can be read, as well as examples of relevant intertexts. Educators who have chosen to prescribe these texts for learners of Afrikaans can use the texts to develop learners' critical literacy by means of problematising the culture and knowledge offered by the texts for readers to weigh and evaluate. The Harry Potter series in Afrikaans offers educators an opportunity to stimulate the interest of Afrikaans-speaking readers in the rich cultural heritage represented by the fantasy, Gothic and school series genres. These texts can furthermore challenge the readers to think critically about the implied intertexts in order to construct their own identity and moral choices. In relation to the aesthetic value of the Harry Potter books, they are firstly discussed as examples of fantasy and how they represent different elements of fantasy. Secondly, Harry Potter can be read in the Gothic tradition, and examples of Gothic elements are shown. Finally, it is shown that the books are a typical school series combination and that they can be read as such. Keywords: Harry Potter; evaluation criteria; intertextuality; fantasy; Gothic novel; school series; critical literacy Sleutelwoorde: Harry Potter; beoordelingskriteria; intertekstualiteit; fantasie; Gotiese spanningsverhaal, skoolreeksboeke; kritiese geletterdheid [Jnl for Language Teaching Vol.37(2) 2003: 197-214]

Content Analysis of the Use of Fantasy, Challenge, and Curiosity in School-Based Nutrition Education Programs

The objective of this research was to document the extent to which elements of fantasy, curiosity, and challenge are used in existing nutrition education materials. A content analysis of 30 nutrition education curricula designed for elementary and middle-school grades was conducted. Print curricula, computer software, videotapes, and puppet shows were included in the sample. The use of challenge, curiosity, and fantasy, as defined in the Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction (TIMI), was assessed in each curriculum. Approximately half of the curricula included elements of challenge, curiosity, or fantasy. All of the nonprint curricula and 30% of the print curricula incorporated these characteristics. Curiosity was most frequently used in these curricula, followed by fantasy and then challenge. The TIMI provided a useful theory to examine the instructional approaches frequently used in school-based nutrition education programs. Nutritionists may apply concepts from the TIMI to the design of future curricula so that these programs are interesting and entertaining for their target audience.

Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson

In 1998, Nalo Hopkinson joined the ranks of Black science fiction writers like Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, and Steven Barnes, among others. The Jamaican-born Hopkinson is the daughter of the late Slade Hopkinson, the Guyanese actor, poet, and playwright who was part of Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop. Hopkinson spent her first sixteen years living in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana. For the past twenty-three years she has resided in Toronto, Canada. She infuses the tropes of science fiction and fantasy with Caribbean folklore and culture. In 1997 she won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest for Brown Girl in the Ring (Warner Books, 1998) and is a recipient of an Ontario Arts Council Foundation award for emerging writers; the Locus Award, First Novel Category; and the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. Hopkinson's first novel also made the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award. Brown Girl is a post-Holocaust novel set in the twenty-first century inner city of Toronto, which has suffer ed an economic collapse. The novel chronicles the struggles of one woman, Ti-Jeanne, to reconcile her individuality as a young North American woman and unwed mother with the group orientation of her Afro-Caribbean ancestry, which includes a nascent ability as a mystic. Hopkinson's second novel, Midnight Robber, will appear from Warner Books in March, 2000. Set on a Caribbean-colonized planet and told in a hybrid creole, it is a science fictional allegory for displacement and exile. She counts African American science fiction writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler among the writers whose work has inspired her. (Delany was one of the writers-in-residence when Hopkinson attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop at Michigan State University in 1995.) Hopkinson is currently editing The Dub Side, an anthology of Caribbean fabulist fiction. This interview is based on Hopkinson's answers to a series of interrogatories which I presented to her in February, 1999, about Brown Girl and about her perspective as the newest (then) Black science fiction writer and the newest (still) Black female science fiction writer. Rutledge: Why are you a writer of Black fantasy? Hopkinson: Because it's better than being a writer of purple prose? I'm a writer. I'm predominantly black. I write fantasy (actually, I say speculative because my work can include elements of science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, horror, and magic realism). I'm not a writer of black fantasy. (I go into that more below.) Rutledge: How long have you been interested in Black fantasy? What do you know of your predecessors like Butler, Delany, Saunders, Barnes, and others? Hopkinson: I think perhaps we're using the word fantasy in different ways, so I need some clarification. Are you using it as an umbrella term for all the genres of fantastical writing? I'm accustomed to hearing it used to name one specific genre. According to the classifications with which I'm familiar, Butler writes science fiction, not fantasy. Delany has written both. Saunders' Imaro trilogy was sword and sorcery (i.e., a sub-genre of fantasy). Barnes writes futuristic action adventure as well as having co-written hard sf with people such as Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Tananarive Due has been dubbed a horror author. I don't know Virginia Hamilton's work very well, but she has published young adult science fiction as well as collections of African American folktales. I've read some form of fantastical literature since I was a tot, be it folktales or Homer's Iliad, so I gravitated naturally toward the sf shelves. Some time in my 20s I saw a photograph of Chip Delany, with whose work I'd fallen in love on first encountering it, and realized that he was black. I'd never heard of such a thing before. I wept. It felt as though my universe had just doubled in size. Though my life was surrounded with Caribbean writers of color (my father and his friends), none of them wrote sf. …

Enhancing Television Literacy Skills Among Preschool Children Through an Intervention Program in the Kindergarten

Abstract A study amongst 150 preschool children assigned to experimental and control groups indicates that an intervention program supported by systematic teachers' mediation can enhance preschoolers interpretive skills of television material, such as the ability to identify elements of fantasy in a television presentation in relation to special effects, the ability to bridge temporal and logical gaps, the ability to identify elements of camera work and their visual implications and the ability to make intelligent predictions based on inference from visual cues.

Selecting Fantasy Literature

Ancient and universal, fantasy was most likely the first mainstream literature rather than the naturalism later recognized as mainstream. Every generation of every culture tells and retells tales based on psychological archetypes, the elements of fantasy. For instance, the Celtic tale “Leir and His Daughters” has been reworked and updated by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Diana Paxson (The Serpent's Tooth, Morrow, 1991). One of the old English/Scottish ballads collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century (Child ballad No. 37) has recently reappeared as the novel Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner (Morrow, 1991). Similarly, retellings of the Arthurian legend are legion, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Malory to Tennyson to such modern writers as T.H. White, Mary Stewart, Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Mists of Avalon, Knopf, 1982), and Guy Gavriel Kay (The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road, Collins, 1986).

Noon in Calcutta: Short Stories from Bengal

A collection of 26 short stories which spans the gamut of Bengali culture, past and present, from the orthodox Hindu of the last century to the violent social and political clashes of the recent decades. Interwoven are elements of folktale, fantasy, science and humour.

Definition and meaning of sexual orientation.

This essay first examines the current discourse on homosexuality and shows how a "gay identity" has been forged within the doctrines and rituals of the gay liberation movement. This substantiation of the gay person is then linked to "the homosexual," created by medicine in the nineteenth century as one piece in a vast mosaic of sexual "perversions." Finally, it is argued that to depict sexuality as fixed, bifurcated states of sexual orientation, and to ignore the fact that erotic preference is labile and interpenetrated by elements of physicality, emotion, and fantasy, is to impede and even to misdirect research.

Propertius, 2. 29A

When Propertius tells Cynthia in 2. 29A that, on his drunken way to another woman (line 14) the previous night, he was seized and hauled back to Cynthia by a band of Cupids, it is fairly clear that the poet is giving dramatic embodiment to the erotic commonplace that the lover fired by wine is unable to stay away from his mistress but is dragged back to her perforce by love.The nature of the drama in which the topos is embodied is, however, not at all clear. Most commentators have seen it as nothing more than a fantasy or fairy-tale having no connection whatsoever with real life. Two, while recognizing that elements of fantasy are present, nevertheless have felt that the action of the drama is derived from real life with the Cupids playing a real-life role.I believe that those who have seen 2. 29A as merely fantasy are incorrect. This is not to say that pure fantasy does not occur in Propertius’ work. But when it does it takes place in a dream or fantasy landscape. In 2. 29A the scene is the streets of Rome and this realistic setting suggests that, as in another realistic setting (3. 1. 9–12) Propertius although giving rein to his fantasy links it with reality by taking on himself the role of triumphator, so here it is more likely that the characters in a drama with a real setting will have real-life roles to play.