History and Theories of Fantasy in the 21st Century

Postado em 2024-09-06

Call for Papers

Special issue theme:
History and Theories of Fantasy in the 21st Century

Editors:
Bruno Anselmi Matangrano (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, França)
Lígia Regina Máximo Cavalari Menna (Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Brasil)
Nathália Xavier Thomaz (Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil)

Fantasy fiction emerged in the second half of the 19th century, in English-language works written by authors such as William Morris and George McDonald, but it was mainly established and disseminated through the publications of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. In the second half of the 20th century, the genre became popular in other languages, diversifying into thematic subgenres (epic, urban, spatial, scientific, dark fantasy, etc.). In the 21st century, Fantasy is undoubtedly one of the most prolific strands of Uncanny Fiction, finding an important space in the Portuguese language. Despite its popularity, it is one of the least academically studied categories of non-mimetic fictions. For example, Tzvetan Todorov, in Introduction to Fantasy Literature (1970), does not address this genre or to works classified as such. Rosemary Jackson, in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (1981), presents it as a modal category that is confused with the fantastic itself. It was not until 1990s, and specially in the 2000s, that researchers like John Clute, Brian Attebery, Farah Mendlesohn, Anne Besson and William Blanc have been concerned with systematizing, categorizing and structuring it, as a genre distinct not only from the Fantastic, but also from Science Fiction, Marvelous, and Magical Realism, with which it has sometimes been confused.  Specific studies on Fantasy written in Portuguese are still few, and often limited to case studies, which means lusophone scholars lack theoretical and historiographical bibliography of the genre, be it originally written in  Portuguese, or translated from foreign sources. Given this scarcity of critical, theoretical and historiographical material on fantasy in Portuguese, this issue of Abusões invites researchers to propose articles that address:

  1. theories of Fantasy and/or its subcategories;
  2. the history of the genre and its transformations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries;
  3. its place in Portuguese-speaking spaces (fiction, market, reception and criticism);
  4. its dialogue and hybridization with other genres and/or in other media.

Priority will be given to studies that consider recent theoretical approaches to this category as well as fictional productions from recent decades, with intent of providing the Portuguese-speaking academics with new sources for future research on such a popular and important genre at present.

Submissions are due December 2, 2024.