Download or read book Fictional Worlds and the Political Imagination written by Garry L. Hagberg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Literature and the Political Imagination written by Andrea T. Baumeister and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume shows how modern political theory can be enriched through an engagement with works of literature. It uses the resources of literature to explore issues such as nationalism, liberal philosophy, utopiansim, narrative and the role of theory in political thought. A variety of approaches are adopted and the aim is to show some of the many and diverse ways in which literature may enrich political theorising, as well as considering some of the problems to which this may give rise. The theorists discussed include Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum. There are literary references from Greek tradegy, Jonathan Swift, Brian Moore, Elizabeth Bowen and contemporary feminist utopian fiction. All the contributors have a long-standing interest in the relations between literature and moral and political thought. They are concerned not to be restricted by conventional academic boundaries and are not united by any party-line or uniformity of intellectual commitments. This volume will be of great interest to all students engaged in the study of politics and literature.
Download or read book In Other Worlds written by Margaret Atwood and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2011 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of the author's essays explores essential truths about the modern world and the her personal relationship with the science-fiction genre, in a volume that is complemented by key reviews and three unpublished Ellmann Lectures.
Download or read book Fictional Worlds and the Moral Imagination written by Garry L. Hagberg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection investigates the kinds of moral reflection we can undertake within the imaginative worlds of literature. In philosophical contexts of ethical inquiry we can too easily forget that literary experience can play an important role in the cultivation of our ethical sensibilities. Because our ethical lives are conducted in the real world, fictional representations of this world can appear removed from ethical contemplation. However, as this stimulating volume shows, the dichotomy between fact and fiction cannot be so easily categorised. Moral perception, moral sensitivity, and ethical understanding more broadly, may all be developed in a unique way through our imaginative life in fiction. Moral quandaries are often presented in literature in ways more linguistically precise and descriptively complete than the ones we encounter in life, whilst simultaneously offering space for contemplation. The twelve original chapters in this volume examine literary texts – including theatre and film – in this light, and taken together they show how serious reflection within fictional worlds can lead to a depth of humane insight. The topics explored include: the subtle ways that knowledge can function as a virtue; issues concerning our relations to and understanding of each other; the complex intertwining of virtues and vices in the modern world; and the importance of bringing to light and reconsidering ethical presuppositions. With an appreciation of the importance of richly contextualized particularity and the power of descriptive acuity, the volume maps out the territory that philosophical reflection and literary engagement share.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds written by Mark J.P. Wolf and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion provides a definitive and cutting-edge guide to the study of imaginary and virtual worlds across a range of media, including literature, television, film, and games. From the Star Trek universe, Thomas More’s classic Utopia, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Arda, to elaborate, user-created game worlds like Minecraft, contributors present interdisciplinary perspectives on authorship, world structure/design, and narrative. The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds offers new approaches to imaginary worlds as an art form and cultural phenomenon, explorations of the technical and creative dimensions of world-building, and studies of specific worlds and worldbuilders.
Download or read book Thought Provoking Play Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan written by Martin Roth and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-01-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers videogames as spaces of political philosophy. Emerging from a negotiation between designers, player and computer, they prompt us to rethink life in common and imagine alternatives to the status quo. Several case studies on science fictional videogames from Japan serve to demonstrate this potential for thought-provoking play.
Download or read book Nabokov Rushdie and the Transnational Imagination written by R. Trousdale and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie's work, this study argues that transnational fiction refuses the simple oppositions of postcolonial theory and suggests the possibility of an inclusive global literature.
Download or read book Fictive Theories written by Susan McManus and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building Imaginary Worlds written by Mark J.P. Wolf and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark J.P. Wolf’s study of imaginary worlds theorizes world-building within and across media, including literature, comics, film, radio, television, board games, video games, the Internet, and more. Building Imaginary Worlds departs from prior approaches to imaginary worlds that focused mainly on narrative, medium, or genre, and instead considers imaginary worlds as dynamic entities in and of themselves. Wolf argues that imaginary worlds—which are often transnarrative, transmedial, and transauthorial in nature—are compelling objects of inquiry for Media Studies. Chapters touch on: a theoretical analysis of how world-building extends beyond storytelling, the engagement of the audience, and the way worlds are conceptualized and experienced a history of imaginary worlds that follows their development over three millennia from the fictional islands of Homer’s Odyssey to the present internarrative theory examining how narratives set in the same world can interact and relate to one another an examination of transmedial growth and adaptation, and what happens when worlds make the jump between media an analysis of the transauthorial nature of imaginary worlds, the resulting concentric circles of authorship, and related topics of canonicity, participatory worlds, and subcreation’s relationship with divine Creation Building Imaginary Worlds also provides the scholar of imaginary worlds with a glossary of terms and a detailed timeline that spans three millennia and more than 1,400 imaginary worlds, listing their names, creators, and the works in which they first appeared.
Download or read book Fictional Games written by Stefano Gualeni and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What roles do imaginary games have in story-telling? Why do fiction authors outline the rules of a game that the audience will never play? Combining perspectives from philosophy, literary theory and game studies, this book provides the first in-depth investigation into the significance of fictional games within fictional worlds. Drawing from contemporary cinema and literature, from The Hunger Games to the science fiction of Iain M. Banks, Stefano Gualeni and Riccardo Fassone introduce five key functions that different types of imaginary games have in worldbuilding. First, fictional games can emphasize the dominant values and ideologies of the fictional society they belong to. Second, some imaginary games function in fictional worlds as critical, utopian tools, inspiring shifts in the thinking and political orientation of the fictional characters. Third, a few fictional games are conducive to the transcendence of a particular form of being, such as the overcoming of human corporeality. Fourth, imaginary games within works of fiction can deceptively blur the boundaries between the contingency of play and the irrevocable seriousness of “real life”, either camouflaging life as a game or disguising a game as something with more permanent consequences. And fifth, they can function as meta-reflexive tools, suggesting critical and/or satirical perspectives on how actual games are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, understood and utilized as part of our culture. With illustrations in every chapter bringing the imaginary games to life, Gualeni and Fassone creatively inspire us to consider fictional games anew: not as moments of playful reprieve in a storyline, but as significant and multi-layered expressive devices.
Download or read book Architects of Impurity a Study of the Political Imagination in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction written by Alun Rhys Williams and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Literary Wonderlands written by Laura Miller and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms. Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans four thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning that can be extracted from the details of the work. Each piece includes a detailed overview of the plot and a "Dramatis Personae." Literary Wonderlands is a fascinating read for lovers of literature, fantasy, and science fiction. Laura Miller is the book's general editor. Co-founder of Salon.com, where she worked as an editor and writer for 20 years, she is currently a books and culture columnist at Slate. A journalist and a critic, her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Guardian, and the New York Times Book Review, where she wrote the "Last Word" column for two years. She is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia and editor of the Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors.
Download or read book Narrative Tactics for Making Other Worlds Possible written by Zachary John Angles and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be they childhood games of make-believe, sophisticated literary projects, or political inventions (a "Great America") authors have taken advantage of a world-building imagination creating their own worlds, and theorizing what they were doing. From the 1960s onwards, fictional worlds were studied from a philosophical point of view, using "possible worlds" theory and modal logic, which consider the ontological status of fictional worlds, the nature of their functioning, and their relationship with the actual world. These ideas have been combined with literary theory, setting the foundation for the study of imaginary worlds. Architects and Urbanists have used facets of world-building arguably for as long as the disciplines have existed. Though modernity launched a highly conscious tradition of imagining worlds in literature and creative culture, it also stained imagination and dreaming with a connotation of frivolity and a wastefulness that was antithetical to modern projects of utility and rationality. In the later half of the twentieth century there was an increase in number of architects exploring the irrational and imaginative in defiance of the reign of rationalism. A chasm tore through the discipline: grounded and rational practitioners on one side and imaginative inventors of form, indulgently entrapped in their fantasies, on the other. World-builders have developed robust methods for producing visions for futures, pasts, and other worlds. A study of worldbuilding and narrative methods and their possible application to architectural and urban design has remained largely unaddressed. This thesis proposes methods for design and tests these methods through a case study. The case study is the city of Boston in the year 2100 being changed by many factors not least of which are the effects of sea level rise. A story has been authored, the world surrounding that story has been structured, and designs within that world have been represented. This thesis seeks to combine methods from storytelling, world-building, and scenario planning in order to allow imaginative explorations of, and design for speculative environments, in response to, and preparation for, challenging situations. And, in the end it seeks to provide tools to tell better stories and see better worlds.
Download or read book Contrasted worlds in the fiction of J K Rowling written by Isabelle Wagner and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2001 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,1, Saarland University, language: English, abstract: In my thesis, I will analyse the two contrasted fictional worlds that Rowling has created in the first four Harry Potter novels: the mundane Muggle world in which Harry first grows up and the fantasy world he enters once he has learned that he is a wizard. At first, I will establish a theoretical background, dealing with fantasy literature in general. I will give an idea of what constitutes a fantasy world and present several definitions of "fantasy" or "the fantastic". I continue with an attempt to define and locate the two worlds in the Harry Potter novels and to find out how they relate to one another. Inspired by Rosemary Jackson's theory about the fantastic as subversion, I would like to find out whether the wizarding world has any subversive potential. I will analyse why it initially appears subversive and whether or not it lives up to this impression. This will involve an examination of the educational and political system of the wizarding world. I will have a look at the concept of family that the novels promote, and questions of gender will be raised. The central question is: what does it mean to be different in the wizarding world? Is the wizarding world more open to otherness than the Muggle world seems to be? *** In meiner Magisterarbeit analysiere ich die beiden gegensätzlichen fiktionalen Welten, die Rowling in ihren Harry-Potter-Romanen geschaffen hat. Dabei bezieht sich die Arbeit auf die bis zum Erscheinungsdatum der Arbeit veröffentlichten Bände 1-4. Zunächst gebe ich einen sehr kurzen theoretischen Überblick über Fantasy-Literatur im Allgemeinen und und stelle verschiedene Definitionen des Fantastischen vor. Ich beschäftige mich mit der Lokalisierung und Beschaffenheit der beiden kontrastierten Welten in HP und erläutere, in welcher Beziehung sie zueinander stehen. Anknüpfend an Rosemary Jackson's Theory vom Fantastischen als Subversion, untersuche ich, ob Rowlings Zauberwelt tatsächlich subversives Potential besitzt. Dabei unterziehe ich das Schulsystem und das politische System der Zauberwelt einem kritischen Blick. Ich analysiere außerdem das Familienbild, das die Romane entwerfen und beschäftige mich mit Gender-Fragen. Die zentrale Frage ist, wie mit Anderssein in der Zauberwelt umgegangen wird.
Download or read book Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth century Fiction written by Christine Rees and published by Longman Publishing Group. This book was released on 1996 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Utopian fiction was a particularly rich and important genre in the eighteenth century. It was during this period that a relatively new phenomenon appeared: the merging of utopian writing per se with other fictional genres, such as the increasingly dominant novel. However, while early modern and nineteenth- and twentieth-century utopias have been the focus of much attention, the eighteenth century has largely been neglected. Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth-Century Fiction combines these two major areas of interest, interpreting some of the most fascinating and innovative fictions of the period and locating them in a continuing tradition of utopian writing which stretches back through the Renaissance to the Ancient World." "Beginning with a survey of the recurrent topics in utopian writing - power structures in the state, money, food, sex, the role of women, birth, education and death - the book brings together canonical eighteenth-century texts containing powerful utopian elements, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and Rasselas, and less familiar works, to examine the reworking of these topics in a new context. The unfamiliar texts, including Gaudentio di Lucca, are described in detail to give students an idea of relevant material across a broad area. A section is devoted specifically to women writers, an area which has become a focus of attention. The mixture of texts provides a useful cross-reference for students tackling the subject from various perspectives and the comprehensive bibliography provides a valuable tool for those with general or specific interests." "Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth Century Fiction will be of interest to students of Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Travel Writing, Utopian Literature and Women's Studies at all levels."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination written by Elana Gomel and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Revival of Political Imagination written by Teppo Eskelinen and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Revival of Political Imagination offers a unique examination of the methodological aspects of utopia. Discussing utopia as a tool for social criticism, method and imaginative spaces - rather than in terms of its content - this volume analyses the function of utopias, to develop utopias as methodology and to show how instrumental utopian modes of thought can be in such diverse fields such as education, labour, and housing. Including discussions of traditional and contemporary utopias, as well as various forms of expression of utopian hope, from literature to social science and cultural practices, The Revival of Political Imagination is both analytical and practical in its elucidation of how political theory can function to foster our imaginative skills.
