Myth, legend, and folklore have been entrenched in children's literature for several centuries and continue to be popular. Some of the most ancient traditional tales still extant come from the Celtic cultures of France and the British Isles, whose languages are among the oldest in Europe. Among these tales are four native Welsh legends collectively known as the Mabinogi, which were first translated into English in 1845 by Lady Charlotte Guest. Numerous children's books have been based on the Mabinogi since then, and many have received awards and critical acclaim. Because these books are...

Imaginary beasts have figured prominently in literary works ever since the ancient world, when these myths were first formulated. But the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of science, the discovery of geological findings that challenged the biblical myth of creation, and the birth of Darwin's theory of evolution. Since then, monsters have evolved from supernatural creatures to natural ones endowed with exceptional size, strength, or intelligence. This book explores both literary and cinematic texts that are especially explicit in their Darwinian portrayal of monstrous beasts, though...

Although the exploration of space has long preoccupied authors and filmmakers, the development of an actual space program, discoveries about the true nature of space, and critical reconsiderations of America's frontier experiences have challenged and complicated conventional portrayals of humans in space. This volume reexamines the themes of space and the frontier in science fiction in light of recent scientific and literary developments. From this new perspective, we discern previously unnoticed commentaries from older authors, while newer writers either remain within a reassuring but...

In a constantly changing world, individuals are forever growing to meet the challenges and developments that emerge around them. In contemporary society, technology is at the heart of change. Literature, too, reflects the evolution of culture and increasingly represents and considers technology. And as children become young adults, their reading helps shape their understanding of the world. This book examines representative works of science fiction, children's literature, and popular culture to show how these works reflect the process of growing up in a technological world.

The volume...

Since the publication of his first short stories in the 1950s, Kurt Vonnegut has enjoyed much popular acclaim and has, since the 1970s, gained growing amounts of attention from the scholarly community. In the course of his career, he has become increasingly concerned with visual images. While such imagery occurs in his short fiction and novels, he has also written plays, in which ideas are visually represented on the stage. In recent years, he has devoted more and more of his time and energy to graphic art, producing paintings that are then silk screened. The contributors to this volume...

Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert remain two of the most popular and influential science fiction writers of the 20th century. Each is a master structuralist whose works succeed in large part through the careful mirroring of concepts at every narrative level. While the fiction of Herbert and Asimov has attracted scholarly attention, science itself is a crucial element that is almost completely ignored in critical assessments of science fiction as literature. Because the works of Asimov and Herbert are grounded in scientific premises, an appreciation of their literary structure depends on an...

Best known today as the author of "Dracula, " Bram Stoker also wrote several other works, including "The Jewel of Seven Stars, Lady Athlyne, " and "The Lair of the White Worm." In his exploration of supernatural subjects, such as vampirism, he is clearly a Gothic writer. The fantastic elements of his novels seem very much at odds with the world of science. Stoker, nonetheless, draws upon a large body of scientific theory and technological innovation throughout his writings. This book studies his blending of Gothic subjects with emerging discoveries in science and technology.

The volume...

The 19th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was focused on the centennial of the initial publication of H. G. Wells's "The War of the Worlds." Wells's first and fourth novels, "The Time Machine" and "The War of the Worlds," have together largely created the science fiction genre and are arguably the two most influential works of science fiction. But through his works Wells has had an even broader influence on the fantastic, and numerous writers, artists, and musicians are indebted to him. This volume includes selected essays from the 19th annual ICFA and gives special...

With our lives firmly controlled by the steady pace of time, humans have yearned for ways to escape its constraints, and authors have responded with narratives about traveling far into the past or future, reversing the flow of time, or creating alternate universes where Napoleon was triumphant at Waterloo or the South won the Civil War. Writers ranging from Dante and Lewis Carroll to Philip K. Dick and Martin Amis have probed into the workings of time, and an overwhelming desire to master time reverberates throughout popular culture. This book considers how imaginative works involving time...

The African American slave narrative is popularly viewed as the story of a lone male's flight from slavery to freedom, best exemplified by the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave" (1845). On the other hand, critics have also given much attention to Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861), to indicate how the form could have been different if more women had written in it. But in stressing the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs as models for the genre, scholars have ignored the formal and thematic importance of marriage and family in the...