A Quest of Her Own: Essays on the Female Hero in Modern Fantasy

by Lori M. Campbell

Overview

This collection of new essays seeks to define the unique qualities of female heroism in literary fantasy from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s through the present. Building upon traditional definitions of the hero in myth and folklore as the root genres of modern fantasy, the essays provide a multi-faceted view of an important fantasy character type who begins to demonstrate a significant presence only in the latter 20th century. The essays contribute to the empowerment and development of the female hero as an archetype in her own right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786477661
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	08/07/2014
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lori M. Campbell is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
I. Pathfinders: Empowered Women from Romance and Folktale to the Birth of Modern Fantasy Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes in Fairy Tales (Jeana Jorgensen)
Neglected Yet Noble: Nyneve and Female Heroism in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (Kristin ­Bovaird-Abbo)
“Radiant and terrible”: Tolkien’s Heroic Women as Correctives to the Romance and Epic Traditions (Jack M. Downs)
Female Valor Without Renown: Memory, Mourning and Loss at the Center of ­Middle-earth (Sarah Workman)
II. Underestimated Overachievers: Unlikely and Unstoppable Female Heroes
“Weak as woman’s magic”: Empowering Care Work in Ursula Le Guin’s Tehanu (Erin Wyble Newcomb)
“Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky”: Neil Gaiman’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Coraline (Melissa Wehler)
Dancing with the Public: Alethea Kontis’s Enchanted, Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (Casey A. Cothran)
“This huntress who delights in arrows”: The Female Archer in Children’s Fiction (Zoe Jaques)
III. Show-Stealers: Heroic Female Sidekicks and Helpers
Sublime ­Shape-Shifters and Uncanny ­Other-Selves: Identity and Multiplicity in Diana Wynne Jones’s Female Heroes (Apolline Lucyk)
A New Kind of Hero: A Song of Ice and Fire’s Brienne of Tarth (John H. Cameron)
And Her Will Be Done: The Girls Trump the Boys in The Keys to the Kingdom and Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix (Lori M. Campbell)
IV. Unwilling ­Do-Gooders: Villains and ­Villain-Heroes
The Problem of Mrs. Coulter: Vetting the Female ­Villain-Hero in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (Amanda M. Greenwell)
“All little girls are terrible”: Maud as ­Anti-Villain in Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Jill Marie Treftz)
The Unbreakable Vow: Maternal Impulses and Narcissa Malfoy’s Transformation from Villain to Hero in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series (Sarah Margaret Kniesler)
Conclusion (Lori M. Campbell)
About the Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

This reviewer cannot find a weak link in this selection, which is all the more important because fantasy literature has often been overlooked in academic circles. One can hope this collection indicates a change in that attitude, or will help to being one about...recommended”—Choice.

From the Publisher

This reviewer cannot find a weak link in this selection, which is all the more important because fantasy literature has often been overlooked in academic circles. One can hope this collection indicates a change in that attitude, or will help to being one about...recommended

Choice