She was a pretty out-of-the-box kind of writer, and I think to some extent her career suffered while she was alive. I mean, she was quite a neglected writer during the time when she was alive. It was only later on that people have come to recognize what an important writer she was. I was brought up on a lot of samurai stories as a child.
And it seems to tap back into something ancient and profound, so that all comes fairly naturally to me. Skip Social. Skip to: Latest News. I was young. I was impressionable. Without J. That said… allow me a moment to describe how much of a fangirl I was during the event. Oh, and the freebies he handed out were pretty cool! So — how do you feel about feel about fantasy and science fiction? Do you consider them to be literature? How would you have answered Mr. Crusty McCrabson? I'm also apparently a dork.
But you know, that's fine; all these things combined make me cool. View all posts by Zen A. In fact I bristled at the title of this blog! So fantasy is really no less real than the Jane Austen stories that never actually happened.
Jay Gatsby never existed. Such a grouch. God that was boring. Which adaptations do you recommend? Perfect casting and a good story all around. The recent film version is crap. My favorite is the 4-part BBC series of Emma, which came out around or so. Very good storytelling all around. Of course sci-fi and fantasy are literature. In fact, by dealing directly mythopoesis in a modern context, sci-fi and fantasy are closer to classical literature than many modern, mainstream works.
And tell me H. Also, another example of a great author given by Sanderson is Shakespeare. Shakespeare had a lot of fantasy in his plays. Now tell me his works are not literature. What a strange comment for that attendee to make. But it sounds like you had a great time, and how wonderful to get books signed by one of your favorite authors!
It was pretty strange. Everyone was pretty indignant. I was amused when even a religious Saudi writer who was among the panel disagreed with him and told him that Rowling is a great author. But despite that I still had a lot of fun! And I cannot stop looking at those books, haha. An author is by definition a person who writes a book — any book. It sounds like Mr.
Crusty McCrabson spewed some sour grapes, and Sanderson turned them into wine. How great to attend that panel discussion. I can feel your excitement through your writing.
And what a bonus to get two books signed! Oh my excitement level here is contained. And I agree with what you said about the critic being like people who watch movies for the cinematography and forget the fun of it. You know what I regret though?
Haha, yes! The Marxist idea about art and literature is that they cannot be separated from other kinds of social practices. Literature according to Marxists is ideologically and historically charged, made to give a message and have an impact on people and society; not only to express but also to create and change. In other words, cultural texts and practices do not just reflect the already shaped dominant culture and society but they actually take part in shaping it.
For this reason in our study of popular culture we must take into consideration its social and historical background. We live in a capitalist society where the media are of major importance. According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, our identity is not a finished thing but it is forged through an unconscious on-going process.
Popular culture constitutes a combination of practices and ideologies changeable and adaptable to the needs and requirements of each era and society; it contributes to the forging of our view of the world and of our sense of selfhood.
Popular culture wields a great power, given actually by ourselves, this is why we should develop a critical consciousness in order to be able to cope with it. It is thus apparent that popular culture is something more than a degraded culture imposed from above, it is something much deeper and essential; definitely worthy of study. The importance of the social and political function of popular culture is undeniable.
To be more specific, popular literature is inextricably linked with the social and historical background of the time during which it was written, creating in this way an association of content and form. But how has this content been created and received? The roles of author and reader in this process are equally important and must be evenly underlined. An enormous critical debate has occurred concerning these roles.
Whilst in the past the author was seen as the divine unquestionable authority, modern literary criticism eliminated its function, either giving importance to the receiver of the text and the text itself or emphasizing the social rather than the personal dimension of it. Among many critical views, the most suitable for the approach of this thesis is the one formulated by Wolfgang Iser. According to Iser:. The work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realized, and furthermore the realization is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader — though this in turn is acted upon by the different patterns of the text The author exists as well as the textual meaning; it cannot be changed or erased but differentiated from era to era and reading to reading.
What can be controlled though is us, the readers, and our understanding of the world around us. It is not clear how a piece of literature can be consumed as a common commodity. If we are to put somewhere the blame for the manipulation of the masses, this would not be art itself but the capitalistic system which aims at the reification of everything that can be consumed Jameson Many times popular culture is characterized as a product of steer consumerism and propaganda created to deceive the masses; an easily digested culture intended for passive receivers.
I cannot deny these designations, sometimes they are actually true. What I would like to emphasize here is that in our study of popular culture we shall be conciliatory, take into consideration many factors and avoid extreme views.
Each text is potentially capable of several readings that may influence the reader or not. Furthermore the popularity of a work does not necessarily set its literary value.
We cannot criticize a popular work as propagandistic or of a bad quality relying just on its popularity; in fact to be attractive to so many people it must have something appealing in it.
In the study of popular culture one deals with the trite division between high and low culture; a division that has always troubled me and actually one of the motives that made me write this thesis.
Highly respected artists against low degraded ones were always components of a dispute, especially within the academic world. This controversy is still taking place. Is any kind of authority capable of judging a good or bad piece of art? To cite an example, Paul Grey on the centenary of T. Purists shudder at such commercial success and its spin-offs.
It seems to me that all forms of art have a common denominator, their aim is to be attractive and create pleasure. Art is made to be shared and if it is shared among many people then that means it is also successful. Of course my intention is neither to consider every kind of art the same nor to underestimate the importance of criticism. Art is governed by a beautiful diversity that actually makes it such a miscellaneous and unique notion.
Different groups of people are attracted by different types of art and this is absolutely normal and healthy since art mirrors society; both are an ongoing process, not a monolithic body of ideas and practices, but an ongoing process that is criticized and must be criticized. Criticism is respectable, it goes deep into art and most of the time gives light, explanation and meaning to it. Nevertheless what I want to underline here is that, as criticism, individual preference in art and literature must be equally respected and not persecuted by any kind of authority or elitism, either by the critical tradition or by the artists themselves.
Art must be enjoyed freely without canons and restrictions. The field of popular culture is vast, especially in this day and age; it contains not only literature but also music, cinema, television, etc. In a thesis of this length the focus will be on a part of contemporary popular literature, that is Fantasy literature. To introduce the notion of Fantasy I could do no better than to cite the felicitous words of Rosemarie Jackson:.
Fantasy, both in literature and out of it, is an enormous and seductive subject. Its association with imagination and with desire has made it an area difficult to articulate or to define, and indeed the value of fantasy has seemed to reside in precisely this resistance to definition, in its free-floating and escapist qualities. Fantasy literature mainly draws its inspiration from the past; either referring to ancient worlds or borrowing elements of these worlds and myths to create new imaginary environments.
The fantasy literature that is examined in this thesis, the fantastic worlds of J. Tolkien and J. Rowling, have more to do with the well-known notion of fairytale or else fairy-story. In these stories one can meet not only elves and fays but also witches, dwarfs, dragons, trolls or giants; mythical creatures, enchanted mortal men as well as the magic of nature and scenery, water, stone, sun.
Fantasy is a gate to a realm of mystery, adventures and an alluring strangeness that the real world lacks. It is probably the literary genre with the longest and richest heritage; in fact fantasy could be considered the progenitor from which the other literary forms came.
Stories characterized by supernatural elements existed in spoken form before the advent of written literature. This oral tradition enabled many ancient myths and stories to be maintained, remembered and conveyed from generation to generation, altered or not.
The same motifs and patterns travel throughout the years and the generations, creating new fairytales enriched and modified each time by each historical and social background; provoking a general feeling of repetition.
The expert in the field of fantasy, J.
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