Stories About Stories - Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth

The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.

About the author

Brian Attebery is Professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is also the coeditor, with Ursula K. Le Guin, of The Norton Book of Science Fiction (Norton, 1997) and the author of Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (Routledge, 2002) among other works.

Summary

The first comprehensive study of fantasy's uses of myth, this book offers insights into the genre's popularity and cultural importance. Combining history, folklore, and narrative theory, Attebery's study explores familiar and forgotten fantasies and shows how the genre is also an arena for negotiating new relationships with traditional tales.

Additional text

Stories about Stories is the best analysis we yet possess of mythopoesis. Attebery's work mediates powerfully between the creative appropriations of myth in modern fantasy, a story known to many, and the less well-known stories of the scholarly rediscovery of myth, and the tenuous survival of oral narrative and myth in living context.

Product details

• Authors: Brian Attebery, Brian (Professor of English Attebery, Attebery Brian
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 23.01.2014
• EAN: 9780199316069
• ISBN: 978-0-19-931606-9
• No. of pages: 252
• Subjects: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy > Science fiction; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Science Fiction, LITERARY CRITICISM / Science Fiction & Fantasy, Folklore, myths & legends, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Folklore studies / Study of myth (mythology)