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Is Fantasy a Central Genre in Modern Literature?


Is Fantasy a Central Genre in Modern Literature?


1. Auflage

von: Jutta Steinseifer-Szabo

CHF 15.00

Verlag: Grin Verlag
Format: EPUB, PDF
Veröffentl.: 14.04.2015
ISBN/EAN: 9783656940937
Sprache: englisch
Anzahl Seiten: 11

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Beschreibungen

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2.1, University of Cambridge (Summer School), course: Literature, language: English, abstract: The term ‘genre’ when used in connection with literature has several meanings. From a commercial perspective, it is a category of literary production that is used to arrange shelves in a bookshop. For readers, it is a set of expectations that guides them towards books similar in content to those they have enjoyed reading before. Academic literary criticism uses genre as a neutral category label for literature with similar content and/or style to facilitate research and discussion (this would be the only academic use of the term in my home country, Germany. In the UK, literary critics sometimes use the term
‘genre fiction’ also as an opposite to ‘literary fiction’, a contrast that will be further investigated below.
The ‘bookshop section’ definition of fantasy is relatively narrow. Motifs and topoi are taken from Norse Mythology: heroes, swords, dragons and wizards are essential ingredients. A medieval component is added, in that the story is often a quest, as is apparent in the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit or There and Back Again’.
Fantasy is a popular and commercially very successful genre. Most bookshops in the English-speaking world today will have a large section dedicated to it, and at least one fantasy book is usually included in the top ten bestseller list for fiction in the UK and many other countries. The best known work that was instrumental in the lasting establishment of the fantasy genre on a global scale is J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (1954-55), of which over 150 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the most commercially successful books of all time.

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