Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Heroic fantasy'

While the long history of the fantastic is often critically examined, contemporary epic fantasy requires attention. This thesis will address a gap in genre scholarship and will focus on authors who have published from 1990 onwards. While this thesis will focus on close readings of a select few authors in order to delve into the complexity of these texts in greater detail, a wide sample of exemplars will be referred to, establishing the significance of this study on contemporary genre fantasy as a whole. This thesis introduces new ways of perceiving current productions of fantasy genre. It explores how the subgenre of heroic epic fantasy fiction exhibits a conscious awareness of its own form. By examining repetitive patterns of genre fantasy, the thesis argues that, rather than being simplistic, reductive, and formulaic, these structures create a layer of complexity and depth with each iteration. In doing so, heroic epic fantasy uses a resonance similar to that of epic mythology in order to create a new world with its own rational laws, one which follows the rationale of our own world. Thus, the thesis investigates structural and narrative patterns of heroic epic fantasy using models from science and philosophy. In this way, although the genre is generally viewed as irrational, the structure of the narrative reveals logical devices derived from real-world principles. Fantasy fiction is not an illogical form. It is, in fact, governed by a sense of rules and structure, one that reflects our current understanding of space-time and cosmology. More importantly, these real-world models are themselves an embedded facet of the narrative and essential to the way both story and character develops. Accordingly, the thesis depicts how these models are an integral part of the structure of heroic epic fantasy itself.

The development of the video game industry and the increasing popularity of the medium as a form of entertainment have led to significant developments in the discipline of game studies and a growing awareness of the cultural significance of video games as cultural artefacts. While much work has been done to understand the narrative aspect of games, there are still theoretical gaps on the understanding of how video games generate their narrative experience and how this experience is shaped by the player and the game as artefact. This interdisciplinary study investigates how meaning is created in Western Role Playing Games (WRPGs) video games by analysing the narrative strategies they employ in relation to those commonly used in Heroic Epic and Fantasy narratives. It adopts the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope and dialogue as the main theoretical tools to examine the creation and integration of narratives in WRPGs with a special focus on the time-space perspective. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dragon Age Origins were chosen as representatives of the WRPG video game genre while Beowulf and the tale of Sigurd, as it appears in the Poetic Edda and the Volsung Saga, were chosen as representatives of the Heroic Epic poetic tradition. References are also made to Fantasy novels, especially the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Textual analysis along with some techniques employed by researchers working with visual methodologies and compositional interpretation were used to analyse relevant aspects of the texts and games. The findings suggest that intertextual and genre materials considerably shape the narrative of WRPGs and exercise a profound dialogical effect on the ludonarrative harmony of the games investigated through their interaction with the game world and gameplay systems. This relationship is most visible in the chronotopic (time-space) aspect of the chosen games. The findings also suggest that Epic material dialogically orients the WRPG players' experience and adjusts their expectations and understanding of the fictional world. This study as well as the refining of chronotopic analytical tools to encompass chronotopic awareness, transportation, and flow may be of use in further chronotopic investigations of different games, literary genres, and/or other media artefacts.

This thesis analyses heroic women in contemporary popular culture, specifically within dystopic texts. Relying on the use of feminist theory to interrogate the texts of the corpus, a clear distinction will be drawn in the introduction between postfeminist discourse and rhetoric and Third Wave feminist intervention. The heroines of the novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009), Jane Slayre (2010), The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century (1990-2007), and The Hunger Games trilogy (2008, 2009, 2010), will serve as the focus for an itnerrogation of female heroism, violence, and posthumanity. Each of the three chapters dedicated to textual analysis considers how the various heroines’ violence is mobilised, and how its representation works to reinscribe or resist patriarchal discourse. My argument is that the discourse which constructs violent women works as a form of violence in and of itself, to which the heroic female body is subjected. The focus on dystopic texts written between 1990 and 2010 serves as the basis for an analysis that seeks to consider how the heroine is a construction of the contemporary moment, and how popular culture and media are driving forces in the way in which postfeminism occupies a central role in the narrative surrounding strong, violent heroines. The range of sub-genres, contemporary Gothic, comic books, and young adult fiction, offer a broad field for interrogating this ubiquitous figure. Chapter one, ‘Spectres of Feminism: Postfeminism and the Zombie Apocalypse’ considers how the integration of posthuman monsters (zombies primarily but also vampires, sea monsters, and the she-wolf) manipulates the potential for agentic heroines such that their violence is reinscribed within heteronormative and Humanist frameworks. The matrimony plot so prevalent in the texts highlights how the active heroine’s violence is only permissible within the bounds of heteronormativity. Chapter two, ‘Violent Heroines, Comic Books and Systemic Violence’ considers the construction of the super heroine of the comic book genre and considers the way in which a racialised female body disrupts the norm and yet is still subjected to patriarchal strategies for containing representations of heroic women’s bodies and violence. The introduction of the cyborg as the posthuman enemy further emphasises how violence is mobilised in the postfeminist heroine as a means of sustaining patriarchal culture and anthropocentric normativity. The analysis in Chapter three, ‘Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games: Dystopia and Resistance to Neoliberal Demands,’ brings to light the potential for a heroine that disrupts the postfeminist model seen in the previous two chapters. Through an interrogation of the way in which the novels are critical of spectator culture and the romance plot, a space for resistance is opened up. The representation of a heroine who eschews the individualist notions of postfeminist heroism by privileging the formation of affective bonds, as well as embracing the posthuman condition rather than fighting against it, offers the potential for a Third Wave feminist protagonist. Considering, in the conclusion, the way in which heroines and viragos are represented in contemporary texts, whether they be fighting zombies, enemies of the state or the state itself, it is clear that the way in which women’s violence is often offered as a postfeminist depiction of women’s equality and power serves to reinscribe women within a patriarchal framework. For the late-capitalist, globalised culture, it is imperative to represent a postfeminist vision of women as powerful, independent and equal without actually challenging the socio-political structure. This dissertation identifies the ways in which postfeminist versions of heroic women are constructed and offer a possible alternative, one which coincides with a Third Wave feminist understanding of the heroine’s role in contemporary society.
Esta tesis toma como punto de partida el análisis de las mujeres heroicas en la cultura popular contemporánea, específicamente en los textos distópicos. Aplicando las teorías feministas al análisis de los textos, se hará una distinción clara entre el discurso postfeminista y la intervención del feminismo de Tercera Ola. Me centraré en las heroínas de las novelas Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009), Jane Slayre (2010), The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century (1990-2007), y la trilogía de The Hunger Games (2008, 2009, 2010) para analizar la violencia y el heroísmo femeninos, así como el posthumanismo. Cada uno de los tres capítulos dedicados al análisis textual reflexiona sobre el modo en que se concibe la violencia de las distintas heroínas, y cómo su representación intenta reinscribir o resistir el discurso patriarcal. Mi argumento es que el discurso que construye a las mujeres violentas funciona como una forma de violencia en y por sí misma, a la que se somete el cuerpo heroico femenino. El estudio de textos distópicos escritos entre 1990 y 2010 sirve de base para un análisis que busca interrogar no sólo a la heroína como construcción del momento actual, sino también el modo en que la cultura popular y los medios constituyen agentes clave en el predominio que el postfeminismo ha conseguido dentro de la narrativa de heroínas fuertes y violentas. La variedad de sub-géneros (Gótico contemporáneo, cómics, y ficción juvenil) ofrece un campo amplio para el análisis de esta figura ubicua. Al considerar el modo en que las heroínas y viragos se representan en los textos contemporáneos queda claro que el modo en que la violencia de las mujeres se ofrece como instancia postfeminista de igualdad y empoderamiento de las mujeres funciona en realidad como re-inscripción de las mujeres dentro de un marco patriarcal. Esta tesis identifica las maneras en que se construyen las versiones postfeministas de las mujeres y ofrecer una posible alternativa, una que coincide con la visión del feminismo de Tercera Ola, acerca del papel de la heroína en la sociedad contemporánea.

Just as memory pervades our everyday lives, it pervades the lives of the characters and readers of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Acts of recall or recollection occur in almost every chapter as the characters in these novels devote much of the present to keeping in touch with some aspect of the past. Memory is integral to Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, highlighting the following problematic questions: Who are we and how do we relate to the past? How is what we wish for the future grounded in the past and the present? Memory is at the core of constructivism, the active construction of reality by the individual through the use of mental activity. In this thesis I maintain that the central protagonists in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, Harry Potter and Lyra Belacqua, actively construct their "selves" from memories and narratives – their own and those of others – just as the novels' readers negotiate their own identities in the world outside of the novels. The constant recalling of the past to confirm and amply one's present creates a complex web of remembering and forgetting, assimilating and discarding, which we attempt to explicate through the use of culturally appropriate metaphors. The thesis comprises three chapters that correlate memory with genre, narrative, and technology respectively. I commence the thesis by exploring the idea of genre as collective memory. I position Harry Potter and His Dark Materials within the genre of heroic fantasy and examine how the monomyth provides readers with the memory triggers they require to decode the structure of these texts. The novels conform to and yet manipulate the preconceived patterns present in the heroic or "high" fantasy genre, where narrative, memory and identity are all linked by the desires of the stories' participants. Chapter Two applies Freud's concept of Nachtraglichkeit, which supposes the process of memory is one of incessant reconsideration or "retranslation", the reworking of memory traces in the light of later knowledge and experience. This conceptualisation of memory is compared to the common, but less productive, tendency to describe memory through objectifying metaphors, such as the idea that memory works analogously to a photograph. Chapter Three addresses how knowledge and experience in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials are furnished by prosthetic memory devices, such as photographs, the Pensieve, the alethiometer and the Amber Spyglass, “that permit us to transcend "raw" biological limits – for example, the limits on memory capacity or limits on our auditory range” (Bruner, Acts of Meaning 34). The novel's protagonists are then armed with these devices in trying to make sense of the landscapes they inhabit. Ultimately, we are all story-tellers (for better or for worse), weaving our self-narratives from material gleaned from the collective memories and prosthetic memory devices of the society we belong to, our own experiences, and the tales of others, trying to achieve the uniformity of consciousness and an awareness of the connection between the actions and events of the past, and the experience of the present, which are fundamental to a sense of individual identity.

Sixteen-year-old Drea Grimm’s mother walked out of their family home at midnight seven years ago. All she left behind were notebooks full of made up stories and a family that Drea, being the oldest, was now in charge of. One day, Drea finds a mysterious letter with her name on it written in her mother’s handwriting and everything she thought was true is destroyed. With the help of her partner on a school project, Ian, Drea uses her mom’s stories and clues from her last moments to heal her family and maybe bring her mother home. But there is someone who wants Drea and they will do anything to draw her closer to the truth, and in turn, closer to supernatural danger.

The present study is concerned with the relationship between The Faerie Queene and modern fantasy literature; Spenser's poem, a "continued Allegory, or darke conceit", repeatedly alludes to historical, political and religious issues that were objects of controversy at the time when it was written. Initially conceived as a twelve-book epic poem, it is set in the magical Faerie Land, where the Faerie Queene has sent her knights on various quests. More specifically, the issue addressed is whether, and to what extent, The Faerie Queene can be considered an ancestor of fully-developed modern fantasy. While there is general consensus that fantasy is a phenomenon that begins in the nineteenth century, some critical studies of the history of the genre mention The Faerie Queene in passing, but they do not dwell on this association. The first chapter presents a survey of the most compelling critical approaches to the genre, as well as an outline of its recurring themes; the second chapter attempts to chart the allegorical subtext of the poem, and analyzes the characters of Arthur, Redcrosse, Britomart and Calidore, concentrating on the aspects that put them in conversation with modern fantasy; in the last chapter the focus will shift to animals and fantastic creatures, another recurrent presence in The Faerie Queene and a stock feature of fantasy literature.

Orientador: Cláudia Fernanda de Campos Mauro
Banca: Aparecido Donizete Rossi
Banca: Karin Volobuef
Banca: Andrea Peterle Figueiredo Santurbano
Banca: Marisa Martins Gama-Khalil
Resumo: Esta tese tem como objetivo principal demonstrar que o protagonista do livro O deserto dos Tártaros (1940), de Dino Buzzati, está inscrito como um dos heróis representantes do limiar entre o modernismo e o contemporâneo. Giovanni Drogo é o herói que, no momento seguinte em que veste seu uniforme de oficial, experimenta um vazio existencial que o faz, em resposta, replicar: "Que coisa sem sentido!". Tomado desse sentimento, muitas vezes a inércia será a única resposta possível deste protagonista frente aos requerimentos cotidianos. A partir dessa premissa, articulando teoria literária, filosofia e contexto, arvoramo-nos em identificar as razões que fundam a heroicidade de Drogo. Após o prefácio, segue-se o capitulo de introdução, no qual tecemos algumas considerações acerca da figura do herói, procurando evidenciar como, nos séculos XVIII e XIX, esse conceito passa por perceptível modificação, graças à ascensão e sedimentação do romance, tal como hoje o conhecemos. Entremeiam a introdução e o capítulo final, três capítulos centrais que formam, em conjunto, a demonstração da tese defendida: de que as razões de Drogo respondem, necessariamente, a uma nova forma de se relacionar e conhecer o mundo. Resignação, recusa e renúncia associam-se em cada um destes capítulos, os quais se iniciam sempre a partir de uma cena fundamental, seguida de sua avaliação. Chegamos ao capítulo final com a possibilidade de identificar, não apenas a posição de Drogo como herói - atendendo, como um pró... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo)
Abstract: This thesis has as the main objective to show that the protagonist of the book The Tartar Steppe (1940), by Dino Buzzati, is registered as one of the representative heroes of the barrier between modernism and what would be considered contemporary. Giovanni Drogo is the hero that, right after he puts on his officer's uniform, experiments an existential emptiness that makes him, in response, state: "What a nonsense!". Taken by this feeling, often the inertia will be the only possible answer this protagonist will offer while facing daily requests. Starting from this premise, articulating literary theory, philosophy and context, we stand up to identify the reasons that establish the heroism of Drogo. After the preface, the introduction chapter follows, at which we develop some considerations about the image of the hero, trying to demonstrate how, during the 18th and 19th centuries, this concept goes through a noticeable modification, thanks to the ascension and sedimentation of the novel, as we know it today. Between the introduction and the final chapter are three main chapters that shape, together, the demonstration of the defended thesis: that the reasons of Drogo respond, necessarily, to a new way to connect and to discover the world. Resignation, refusal and renouncement connect to each of these chapters, which start always from a fundamental scene, followed by its examination. We reached the final chapter with the possibility of identifying not just the position o... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)
Doutor

This essay analyses the female hero in four urban fantasy novels, and evaluates several examples of the genre to find out whether or not the heroes can be found to be "sheroes" or traditionally male heroes. The study outlines the myth of the hero's journey and gives examples of the masculine as well as the feminine approach and how they apply to the four novels. The attributes of the hero are also reviewed and put into perspective within the studied material. It appears that while it is often argued that the urban fantasy genre has strong woman protagonists, the heroes therein are not "sheroes" since they behave like typically male heroes.

Literature is an important part of the curriculum of Swedish secondary school and The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan is a popular novel among teenagers in Stockholm. This creates an opportunity to look closer at the novel, and to investigate the narrative’s discussion of the female, and in this particular case, its depictions of the female characters. This essay will show that by reading the novel with a feminist approach, inspired by the work of Luce Irigaray, the narrative reveals cultural aspects that might work well as a ground for discussions in the classroom.                       This essay considers how the narrative allows for opportunities of female resistance. Without replacing the male on the frontier of adventure, and without betraying their femininity, the female characters of the novel manage to change the power dynamic of how they are perceived. The female protagonist, Piper, works as a gatekeeper for the female resistance, and eliminates – for the cause – unbeneficial female behaviours.                       A feminist approach is beneficial to the diversity that is expected in Swedish secondary school. In addition to already existing research on Riordan’s work, this essay helps justify why The Lost Hero is a good literary alternative for the classroom.

ZBIEJCZUKOVÁ, I. The conception of hero in fantasy literature. Diploma thesis. Prague: ÚČLLV FF UK, 2010-2011. This diploma thesis deals with typology of heroes and heroins in fantasy literature, with special regard to heroic quest from the point of view of literally composition. One part of the thesis applies to the defition and history of fantasy genre in both anglo-saxon and czech environment. The thesis therefore uses and cites both czech and foreign fantasy literally works. The aim of the thesis is to point to archetypical neomythic structure of fantasy texts and to their tendency to recreate heroism using particular examples of fantasy literature.

In the course of this dissertation, I will interrogate traditional representations of the heroic figure within the fantasy genre. I will argue that the tropes established by some of the most renowned fantasy texts are undergoing a process of evolution and that Steven Erikson (who is the special focus of my discussion) seeks to revision the heroic mould through his construction of Coltaine of the Crow Clan in Deadhouse Gates (2001). Deadhouse Gates centres on Coltaine, who is tasked with escorting tens of thousands of refugees across four hundred leagues of hostile territory. This re-evaluation of fantasy modes has significant ramifications for the future development of the genre as a whole. In order to explore how Erikson interrogates heroic representation, I briefly establish some of the distinctive characteristics of fantasy. I then explore how some major fantasy texts represent heroism, before investigating Erikson’s particular response to these traditions.
English Studies
M. A. (English)

As a genre, fantasy seeks to validate the unconscious world of dreams, to insist not merely on its existence in the human psyche, but on its essential, vital presence. A work of fantasy begins, typically, with the implicit or explicit suggestion of "preferable modes of reality" (Spivack 1987, x) and moves toward the hero's integration of previously unconscious elements of the self. The narrative structure mirrors that movement: at the heart of fantasy is the journey toward a goal and the subsequent return home. This circular journey is an apt metaphor for the quest for identity, which is the focus of my dissertation. To be "at home"--spiritually and soulfully with our deepest selves, one guide in the fantasy realm insists--is the ultimate goal of mortal life. The introductory chapter contains an overview of relevant Jungian concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious and Eriksonian life-cycle psychology which help illuminate the universal elements of the hero's quest. The choice of works for my study reflects my premise that the quest for identity takes shape according to the hero's place in the life cycle. The pragmatic values, goals, and struggles of persona-crafting, for example, differ greatly from those of mid-life reckoning with mortality. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and John Ruskin's tale, "The King of the Golden River", are the focus of the second chapter, which concerns the individuation of child heroes. The third chapter treats works with heroes in the transformative stage between adolescence and adulthood: Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I, Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and George MacDonald's Phantastes. In the fourth chapter, the quest for a renewed sense of identity takes the form of a dialectic between past and present selves in C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and Le Guin's Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea. The concluding chapter examines MacDonald's Lilith and H. Rider Haggard's She, two works which give imaginative treatment to concepts of afterlife and the unnatural prolongation of mortal life, respectively.

Bachelor Honours - Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
Gender is an important aspect of children’s literature, as it provides a point of reference for readers to understand how their own gender is developed, and the cultural forces that dictate what gender looks like. However, typical representations of gender in children’s literature is often stereotypical, and presents rigid notions of how boys and girls, men and women, are supposed to act, speak, or feel, within themselves and towards each other. The Harry Potter series as children’s literature uses these stereotypes to represent fluid notions of gender, providing a hero that is sometimes not typically heroic, and a female protagonist that at times is stronger and braver than her male counterpart. A postmodern view of gender is that an individual does not have to be typecast as masculine or feminine, brave or cowardly, strong or weak; instead, as this analysis of the Harry Potter series shows, characters blend ‘masculine’and ‘feminine’ traits in a way that subverts the typical ideals of male and female characters, to ultimately engender new ways of thinking about how to be masculine or feminine. This analysis will draw upon a post-structuralist, feminist viewpoint, using such theoretical work as R.W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence, the idea of the grotesque female body and its link to subversive humour, and Margery Hourihan’s analysis and reimagining of the heroic quest narrative.