Contours of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Eighth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Addressing the world of the imaginary, the dream, the uncanny, the paranormal, and all forms of speculative fiction, "Contours of the Fantastic" is a collection of twenty-two essays that were originally presented as the Eighth International Conference of the Fantastic in the arts at Houston in 1987. The volume gives perspectives on the territory covered by the fantastic, showing the diversity of the field and the variety of approaches used to survey and comprehend it. Each essay brings its own method of investigation - phenomenological, theoretical, historical, sociological, psychological, textual - in an effort to situate the border between reality and fantasy and the passage from one to the other. Authors and works discussed in the volume include Balzac, Dickens, Poe, Aldous Huxley, C.S.Lewis, Tolkien, Muriel Spark, Mary Shelly, Albee's "Zoo Story", Pynchon, Coleridge's "Christabel", Le Fanu's "Carmilla", and Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" triologies. Individual essays within these major divisions discuss specific works of fantasy, offer a psychology of fantasy writers; analyze language; assess fantasy from a national perspective, and investigate Christian horror in fiction. The final two sections delineate the borderline between fantasy and reality - in science and in relation to space and time. Among the contributors are Brian Aldiss, novelist, poet and critic, author of more than two dozen books, Vivian Sobchack, science fiction film critic and writer on semiotics and phenomenology, and Nancy Willard, author of novels, collected stories, poetry and children's books.

Reviews

Contours of The Fantastic is a collection of selected essays from the Eighth International Conference on Fantastic in the Arts, held in Houston, Texas in March 1987. There are some amazing relations/comparisons/relationships drawn here. You will find connections in fiction in ways crossed that you never realized, or could believe. You will find insights on material labeled Fantasy or SF: the OZ creator; Tarzan; films; Christian horror; Gothic; not to mention Lem, Pynchon, Kubin, wand Delany. Amazing, the parallels drawn. Frightening, the insights. You can learn more about interrelationships in fiction in this collection more than anywhere else.-True Review
"Contours of The Fantastic is a collection of selected essays from the Eighth International Conference on Fantastic in the Arts, held in Houston, Texas in March 1987. There are some amazing relations/comparisons/relationships drawn here. You will find connections in fiction in ways crossed that you never realized, or could believe. You will find insights on material labeled Fantasy or SF: the OZ creator; Tarzan; films; Christian horror; Gothic; not to mention Lem, Pynchon, Kubin, wand Delany. Amazing, the parallels drawn. Frightening, the insights. You can learn more about interrelationships in fiction in this collection more than anywhere else."-True Review

Author Bio

MICHELE K. LANGFORD is Professor of French Literature and Cinema at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. Her previously published works include Les Menageries Intimes (1983), The Notion of Power in Surrealism, Existentialism, and Science Fiction, Extrapolation (1986), and L'Univers Fantastique dans les contes de Jean Ray, Le Ragioni Critche (1988).