Overview

Myth is oral, collective, sacred, and timeless. Fantasy is a modern literary mode and a popular entertainment. Yet the two have always been inextricably intertwined. Stories about Stories examines fantasy as an arena in which different ways of understanding myth compete and new relationships with myth are worked out. The book offers a comprehensive history of the modern fantastic as well as an argument about its nature and importance. Specific chapters cover the origins of fantasy in the Romantic search for localized myths, fantasy versions of the Modernist turn toward the primitive, the post-Tolkienian exploration of world mythologies, post-colonial reactions to the exploitation of indigenous sacred narratives by Western writers, fantasies based in Christian belief alongside fundamentalist attempts to stamp out the form, and the emergence of ever-more sophisticated structures such as metafiction through which to explore mythic constructions of reality.

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9780199316076

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Reviews

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. * Tom Shippey, the author of The Road to Middle Earth * With radiant clarity, Brian Attebery's Stories about Stories examines what happens when we 'imagine our way into the realms of mastery and wonder' by considering the performative and contextualizing nature of narrative. It is a brilliant book by one of the fantastic's most informed, most penetrating, and wisest critics, who understands that the subjectivity of fictive knowledge is the engine behind its energy and fascination. * Peter Straub * Brian Attebery hits the mother lode in this brilliant archaeology of fantasy and myth. The closest thing to a definitive guide for what C.S. Lewis called 'lies breathed through silver,' Stories about Stories enables us to understand the higher truths of narratives that walk a tightrope between sacred and profane, faith and skepticism, poetry and prose. * Maria Tatar, author of Enchanted Hunters * Brian Attebery is the most readable, the most knowledgeable, and the least quarrelsome of critics. Stories about Stories adds new vistas of understanding to his unsurpassed survey of imaginative literature. * Ursula K. Le Guin * I highly recommend Brian Attebery's new book. It's a scholarly work, but it reads with bright clarity as takes us back and forth between fantasy and myth, showing not only the connections, but also how the best of fantasy is a roadmap that can return the reader to its source material. * Fantasy and Science Fiction *

Brian Attebery is the most readable, the most knowledgeable, and the least quarrelsome of critics. Stories about Stories adds new vistas of understanding to his unsurpassed survey of imaginative literature. --Ursula K. Le Guin Brian Attebery hits the mother lode in this brilliant archaeology of fantasy and myth. The closest thing to a definitive guide for what C.S. Lewis called 'lies breathed through silver, ' Stories about Stories enables us to understand the higher truths of narratives that walk a tightrope between sacred and profane, faith and skepticism, poetry and prose. --Maria Tatar, author of Enchanted Hunters With radiant clarity, Brian Attebery's Stories about Stories examines what happens when we 'imagine our way into the realms of mastery and wonder' by considering the performative and contextualizing nature of narrative. It is a brilliant book by one of the fantastic's most informed, most penetrating, and wisest critics, who understands that the subjectivity of fictive knowledge is the engine behind its energy and fascination. --Peter Straub 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. --Tom Shippey, the author of The Road to Middle Earth

I highly recommend Brian Attebery's new book. It's a scholarly work, but it reads with bright clarity as takes us back and forth between fantasy and myth, showing not only the connections, but also how the best of fantasy is a roadmap that can return the reader to its source material. --Fantasy andScience Fiction Brian Attebery is the most readable, the most knowledgeable, and the least quarrelsome of critics. Stories about Stories adds new vistas of understanding to his unsurpassed survey of imaginative literature. --Ursula K. Le Guin Brian Attebery hits the mother lode in this brilliant archaeology of fantasy and myth. The closest thing to a definitive guide for what C.S. Lewis called 'lies breathed through silver, ' Stories about Stories enables us to understand the higher truths of narratives that walk a tightrope between sacred and profane, faith and skepticism, poetry and prose. --Maria Tatar, author of Enchanted Hunters With radiant clarity, Brian Attebery's Stories about Stories examines what happens when we 'imagine our way into the realms of mastery and wonder' by considering the performative and contextualizing nature of narrative. It is a brilliant book by one of the fantastic's most informed, most penetrating, and wisest critics, who understands that the subjectivity of fictive knowledge is the engine behind its energy and fascination. --Peter Straub 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. --Tom Shippey, the author of The Road to Middle Earth

Author Information

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.

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