High Fantasy Research Articles

Itinerarios híbridos para lectores modernos. Un enfoque transmediático para textos de fantasía épica / Hybrid itineraries for modern readers. A transmedia approach to epic fantasy texts

The content of the following contribution focuses on epic fantasy literature and the formation of the reader in times of evanescent content. The main goal is to analyse the horizon of expectations of the reader in accordance with an era of transmedia manifestations, but which at the same time requires a social need for the hero. A hybrid reading itinerary is proposed that takes into account the different cultural demonstrations (in different media, mainly physical and audiovisual) that a text possesses and the projections that all this can have in terms of the possible creation of content. In conclusion, the need to connect reading with sensory atmospheres that transcend people is observed; likewise, the need to analyse what the user expects from the narratives that are presented to him/her; and the need to carry out a journey through the present day and tradition of epic fantasy or high fantasy, which allows us to verify archetypes or novelties in the architecture of such texts and whether digital evolution really affects their argumentative design.

The quest for the ukrainian “Araucana”. The case for the humanization of the Orc

The decade-long armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine (2014-2024) has been characterized legally and politically in different ways, such as a war of self-defense against external aggression to uphold the rules-based international order, or a war of national liberation against occupation and full-scale invasion by an imperialist power. On a social level, the rhetoric or language used by the immediately affected parties reveals the need to construct the conflict also as an existential fight between good and evil whereby the enemy is dehumanized by referring to them as “orcs.” Yet, this rhetoric could prove counter-productive as both a matter of principle and expediency. As a matter of principle, the same rules-based international order for which this just war of self-defense is being fought requires the humane treatment of the enemy. As a matter of expediency, the demeaning label “orc” risks being reclaimed by the enemy as a source of national pride and cultural identity, thus bolstering their will to fight and making a return to peace more difficult. The humanization of the enemy as both the right thing to do and the more convenient course of action is the best approach not only to win the war, but to fight and win well. The methodology used consists of textual analysis and philosophical argument drawing on primary and secondary sources. The former include historical works from both Hispanic and Ukrainian literature, namely the epic poem “La Araucana” (1569-1578-1590) by Alonso de Ercilla, and “Eneida” (1798) by Ivan Kotlyarevsky, a parody of the epic poem written by Virgil. Secondary sources include works of history, sociology, philosophy, law and ethics, as well as epic fantasy, namely J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and Kirill Eskov’s “The Last Ringbearer”.

THE TRANSLATION OF S. KING’S “DARK TOWER” NOVEL SERIES AND R. BROWNING’S POEM “CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME”: A COMPARATIVE ASPECT

This article analyzes the formation of the diversity of the genre of the series of novels “The Dark Tower” by Stephen King, as well as the clips of Robert Browning’s poem in the predominant image of the Tower of Roland and the connection with these genre transformations. In the course of the study, the authors analyze the series of novels “The Dark Tower” and the poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, in particular, the features of the genres, the compositional and stylistic features inherent in these works. When demonstrating the characteristic features of R. Browning’s and S. King’s creative work, it was found that romanticized fantasy per se includes many genre features that differ from the manifestations of horror and classic fiction: fantasy is a genre in the style of high fantasy and concealment, a fairy tale. At the same time, dark fantasy, although it includes most of the traditional fantasy surroundings, is characterized not so much by the interrelationship between its fantasy elements and the narrative, but rather by the connection between the gothic and the horror types of fiction; there is much less science fiction in dark fantasy than in high fantasy. At the discussion stage, it was determined that the best method for translating the lead when working with two multi-genre works is the comparative method, which is based on a simple principle: “What is it like?” As a result, we came to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the use of a methodological method leads to the fact that in the process of text analysis it is necessary to limit the framework to the conventions of the functional style, the genre uniqueness of the analyzed ones, preserving their artistic orientation and the idiostyle of the author. On the other hand, in this way we get the opportunity to carry out parallel search and optimization of data for its synthesis and translation into the exchange part.

Contemporary Magic’s Reflection of Religion in Garth Nix's Sabriel

Since the late nineteenth century, with the formalization of religious studies as an academic discipline, the notion of "magic" has assumed a pivotal role in delineating the outlines of religion. Eminent scholars in these fields have engaged in rigorous debates concerning the intricate interplay between magic and religion. Nevertheless, endeavors to establish precise distinctions between these domains have proven to be remarkably unpredictable, subject to persistent scrutiny and deconstruction. The concept of magic has obstinately retained its elusive and enigmatic character. This paper aims at analyzing Garth Nix’s Sabriel as a contemporary work of fantasy, published in 1995. Nix’s intention to incorporate religious elements into the novel was to reflect on the world people live in by including a coherent magical system. He was able to step beyond the novel’s direct meaning to convey what his symbolic elements connote. In this paper, the main characteristics of high fantasy are presented and thoroughly explained. The magical system in the novel takes the spotlight with a descriptive and analytic approach tackling its significance and specifications with regards to the religious roots that it stems from. The religious elements including baptism, sacrifice, Dante’s inferno and the gates of death, bells, and charter stones are also introduced with their defining qualifications compared to the elements in Sabriel.

Anthropocene Fantasy and Infrastructures of Exploitation

AbstractThis essay traces the emergence of Anthropocene fantasy through an analysis of three multivolume series—George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings, and N. K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth. Each of these series repurposes the conventions of epic fantasy to analyze the ideological underpinnings of anthropogenic crisis. Among the most important tropes revised are fantasy infrastructures, which, in Anthropocene fantasy, frequently manifest a problematic division between the human and the nonhuman. Consequently, characters’ responses to these infrastructures often reflect these novels’ ecological politics. The surrender of agency associated with the abandonment of ancient infrastructures further indicates Anthropocene fantasy's interest in reimagining the individualistic mode of human agency that drives so many novel plotlines, fantasy and realist alike. Anthropocene fantasy's revision of its own problematic genre infrastructures thus has implications not only for the epic fantasy but for the novel form more broadly.

Female Characters of Fantasy in George Raymond Richard Martin’s A Game of Thrones

Fantasy is fiction about bizarre and impossible to which female characters were connected through this work. A Game of Thrones is an epic fantasy novel, under the series. A Song of Ice and Fire. This fantasy novel involves psychological and archetypical personal features to create the middle age’s culture. A good number of female characters were presented who were not just an accessory but an engaging, powerful and successful person belonging to various age groups. Fantasy in this novel develops along with the heroines. Martin’s heroines can be considered as feminists, they were not limited to the stereotypical gender roles. The female protagonists of the series are generally aristocratic women who have to abide the rules which are enforced on them. Women navigate societal expectations in diverse ways, with some conforming, others openly resisting, and a third group employing more subtle, devious methods to oppose prevailing norms. All the women are oppressed, they have to struggle and are limited by the boundaries set by the society typical for many a book of the fantasy genre. They all are affected by the patriarchal society they live in. Martin tries to overcome all these with some female characters with different aspects but believably strong.

ПУТЕШЕСТВИЕ И ПУТЬ В «САГЕ О ВЕТРОКРЫЛАХ» ЭНДРЮ ПИТЕРСОНА

The article examines the series of books by Andrew Peterson “The Wingfeather Saga” (2008–2014), written in the genre of epic fantasy and aimed at children. The theme of the journey referring to the hero’s evolution and spiritual growth is of special importance there (thus, the geography of the fictional world is well-developed, featured on the maps and correlated with the history). By choosing children as protagonists, the author introduces an additional specificity into hiswork: the characters’ age features and their gradual evolution are highlighted: they become braver and tougher, abandon childish egocentrism, accept their duties and responsibilities, and move to a new stage in their relations both with the people and the Maker. The author of the article notes that in addition to the loci traditionally depicted in books belonging to the epic fantasy genre (the castle of the main villain, dangerous mountains, magic forest, idyllic hometown), Peterson introduces a school into the narrative as a setting, which belongs to another literary tradition. The theme of growing-up and spiritual improvement, overcoming the temptations brings together the fantasy story, closer to both the Bildungsroman and the genre of allegory.

The Role of Cultural Capital in Self-Reported Alexithymia and Empathy.

Sociocultural factors play an essential role in the way we process and express emotions. In this study, we asked whether Cultural Capital (CC)-the set of knowledge, cultural codes, and skills embodied by people-explains individual differences in two constructs measuring the capacity to understand our own emotions (alexithymia) or others' emotions (empathy). A pre-registered survey was conducted with an Italian sample ( = 475). Alexithymia and empathy were assessed respectively via the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Regression analyses confirmed a significant, although limited, role of CC in predicting alexithymia and empathy. People with higher CC showed lower Externally Oriented Thinking, higher Perspective Taking, and higher Fantasy. Self-reported alexithymia and empathy were also impacted by scores on a social desirability scale. These results suggest that i) Cultural Capital influences the ability to analyse one's own feelings and understand others' perspectives, and ii) social desirability threatens the validity of self-report measures of emotional abilities. Overall, this research underlines the importance of studying affective processes by considering an individual's cultural context.

A Comparative Study of High Fantasy in the Arabic and Persian Children's Stories "Badr al-Budur" and " Mah Pishooni"

A Comparative Study of High Fantasy in the Arabic and Persian Children's Stories "Badr al-Budur" and " Mah Pishooni"

The Shape of Power and of Pain in Game of Thrones

ABSTRACT To obliterate history from any narrative model, you must flatten that model so that no temporal change is possible. One way to do this is to remove instances of conflict, another is to render conflict perpetual. The latter is the move made by Game of Thrones, a television drama treated here as an antiutopian text, a model of twenty-first century epic fantasy in its surrender not of morality but of historicity.

Social Capital: Epic Fantasy and the Magical School

Abstract The term “cultural capital” has entered the general lexicon of cultural criticism as a description of social prestige won through the acquisition of knowledge rather than monetary wealth. And, yet, for all its utility in delineating the form of value acquired by students in the study of literature in school, cultural capital has proven limited in its ability to explain the dynamics of the contemporary literary field at large. Addressing this limitation, this essay reintroduces a lesser-known term from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, “social capital,” exploring how it becomes strikingly visible in one of the dominant popular genres of our time, epic fantasy.

Chart Notes

Chart Notes

Paradigm Shift in Fantasy Literature: Screen Adaptations as a Source of Infotainment

In the previous two decades, young adult fiction has dominated the best-selling books, owing to its popularity and the ease with which it is widely available over the internet. Young adult fiction and high fantasy have been extensively studied in the literature in connection to a variety of genres, which also include fantasy books. Numerous researchers have examined blockbuster fantasy series in this regard. Several academics have shed new light on cinema adaptation theory or its critical examination within this area of study. As such, this study will examine the intertextual utterances seen in most significant fantasy blockbusters. The study examines a variety of disciplines, including cinema adaptations, high fantasy books, and young adult writing.

From the Red Keep to Winterfell: Translating Toponyms in High Fantasy Literature from English into Arabic

: The recent popularity of the fantasy genre in the Arabic world has seen increased translation activity into Arabic (De Blasio 2019). Despite this interest, scholars have focused their attention on low fantasy, with little attention to high fantasy. This study investigates book five of George R.R Martin’s novel series “A Dance with Dragons (2011), and its Arabic translation رقصة مع التنانين raqsa mc ?ltanani:n (2020) with a specific focus on Toponyms. The study uses textual analysis of the translation of book five of the novel series to determine the translation procedures used, and interviews with the official translator to understand the factors behind the translation choices in the series. The study adopts Aixelá’s 1996 model of culture-specific items (CSI) for the classification of the translation procedures. The results indicate the prevalence of two main translation procedures; conservation and substitution. The two procedures are used to strike a balance between the readability of the text, readers’ expectations, and maintaining the fantasy of the secondary world in which the narrative takes place.

Жанровый сдвиг в «Чернильной трилогии» Корнелии Функе

The “Tintentrilogie” by Cornelia Funke is one of the most well-known works of German fantasy literature. It is meant for children and teenagers, but the first part differs from its sequels as this article demonstrates. The first book of the trilogy strictly follows the canons of children’s literature while the second and the third ones incorporate significant elements of epic fantasy. Such blending of genres allows to expand the reading audience and to treat more seriously the subjects brought up in the text.

Representation of Women in Game of Thrones: Sensational or Realist

This paper intends to work on the portrayal of women in the television adaptation of George R. Martin’s epic fantasy novel, A Song of Ice and Fire. It is a medieval drama loosely based on the War of the Roses. The show has a huge fan base that includes people from all age groups, cultures, and nations. But at the same time, it has been strongly criticized for its explicit sexual violence, misogyny, and objectification of women. Elaina Docterman of TIME magazine wrote that the show has a “woman problem” and there are some hard-to-watch scenes of rape and sexual torture of women. Naked women have been objectified and used as props and critics have lashed out against the gratuitous nudity on the show, dismissing it as a lure to keep viewers hooked by providing exposition against the backdrop of sex and nudity.

Translating Stephen King’s The Stand to Quality TV

Abstract Released in 1978 and updated in 1990, the post-apocalyptic epic fantasy novel The Stand remains one of author Stephen King’s most significant works. The Stand tells a quasi-religious story of good and evil after the USA is devastated by a potent strain of influenza known as ‘Captain Trips’. Two camps of survivors emerge, one under the benevolent direction of an old woman named Mother Abigail, and the other lorded over by a devilish Tyrant named Randall Flagg. Like so much of King’s writing, it has been adapted to screen. It was first adapted into a four-part broadcast television miniseries event for broadcast network ABC in 1994. The Stand was adapted to television once again in 2020, this time as a limited series (nine episodes) for subscription video on demand (SVOD) service Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access). This article uses these two adaptations of The Stand to examine the similarities and differences between two eras of US ‘quality’ television. ‘Quality TV’ describes a broad range of TV series, linked by their intention to be received as prestigious and therefore culturally valuable. By comparing two adaptations of the same original story, we can better understand how these series adapted from Stephen King’s work served and were shaped by the commercial and cultural imperatives of the broadcast and post-broadcast eras of US TV.

Analysis of the Application of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle in the Movie The Lord of the Rings

The movie The Lord of the Rings took the world by storm upon its release, winning 351 international awards and 284 nominations, including 17 Academy Award nominations. It is adapted from the epic fantasy novel, written by Professor Tolkien, which has caused a sensation in UK and even across the globe since its publication in 1954. And Tolkien was then known as “the originator of fantasy literature” and “the father of fantasy literature”. As is thought by some critics, without The Lord of the Rings, a modern literary type of fantasy genre would not be produced. The characters in the successful works have different speaking styles whose conversations largely promote the development of plots. Thus, for the purpose of understanding its plots more precisely, it is necessary to find out the Conversational Implicatures, the real meaning conveyed by the speaker, and explore the real meaning expressed by the speakers. Here, the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in pragmatics will be helpful. Therefore, this paper analyses some selected conversations in The Lord and the Rings which violate the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in pragmatics. It aims to find out the generation of the Conversational Implicature or the effects of these conversations in characterization and plot arrangement. Meanwhile, it may also be enlightening for analyzing daily conversations in various occasions of real life.

Canadian Children’s Fantasy Literature: A Walk Out of the World and The Root Cellar

This study explores the brief history of Canadian Children’s fantasy literature, focusing on Ruth Nichols’s A Walk Out of the World and Janet Lunn’s The Root Cellar. Nichols’s work is the story of Judith and Tobit who walk into another world. In this secondary world, it is revealed that they are descendants of past kings. Their task is to fight against an ancient evil usurper. The villain, after gazing Judith’s eyes, commits suicide. The battle ends, so the children come back to reality. In this epic fantasy, Nichols tried to mix Canadian landscape with the various mythic aspects. Lunn’s story is a time-travel fantasy to learn Canadian history and family history. Rose Larkin goes back to the American Civil War through an old root-cellar. As an orphan, she is isolated in reality. However, in the past, she makes friends, experiences the life and difficulties of the time, and learns about the people who lived in her aunt’s house. After time-travel, Rose becomes a good girl and is happy with her new family members. This novel deals with the concept of belonging and ‘home.’

Empathy, Emotion Recognition, and Paranoia in the General Population.

BackgroundParanoia is associated with a multitude of social cognitive deficits, observed in both clinical and subclinical populations. Empathy is significantly and broadly impaired in schizophrenia, yet its relationship with subclinical paranoia is poorly understood. Furthermore, deficits in emotion recognition – a very early component of empathic processing – are present in both clinical and subclinical paranoia. Deficits in emotion recognition may therefore underlie relationships between paranoia and empathic processing. The current investigation aims to add to the literature on social cognition and paranoia by: (1) characterizing the relationship between paranoia and empathy, and (2) testing whether there is an indirect effect of emotion recognition on the relationship between empathy and paranoia.MethodsParanoia, empathy, and emotion recognition were assessed in a non-clinical sample of adults (n = 226) from the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland (NKI-Rockland) dataset. Paranoia was measured using the Peters Delusions Inventory-21 (PDI-21). Empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a self-report instrument designed to assess empathy using four subscales: Personal Distress, Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, and Fantasy. Emotion recognition was assessed using the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (ER-40). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to estimate relationships between paranoia, the four measures of empathy and emotion recognition.ResultsParanoia was associated with the Fantasy subscale of the IRI, such that higher Fantasy was associated with more severe paranoia (p < 0.001). No other empathy subscales were associated with paranoia. Fantasy was also associated with the emotion recognition of fear, such that higher Fantasy was correlated with better recognition of fear (p = 0.008). Paranoia and emotion recognition were not significantly associated. The Empathic Concern subscale was negatively associated with emotion recognition, with higher empathic concern related to worse overall emotion recognition (p = 0.002). All indirect paths through emotion recognition were non-significant.DiscussionThese results suggest that imaginative perspective-taking contributes to paranoia in the general population. These data do not, however, point to robust global relationships between empathy and paranoia or to emotion recognition as an underlying mechanism. Deficits in empathy and emotion recognition observed in schizophrenia may be associated with the broader pathology of schizophrenia, and therefore not detectable with subclinical populations.