The Dark Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Ninth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

by C. W. Sullivan III

Overview

This anthology of essays focuses on the darker side of the human condition as it appears in fantastic literature. The first section of the book, The Dark Self, takes its direction from Colin Manlove's essay on Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a classic examination of the dark side of the self. Section two, Mainstream Dark, examines mainstream authors who have used elements of the fantastic in their dark visions. The Dark Arts, section three, examines the ways in which the fine arts deal with the darker elements of the real and the fantastic. The fourth section, Humor in the Dark, looks at comedic elements in film and fiction. The final section features Kathryn Hume's essay Postmodernism in Popular Literary Fantasy and other essays that are a part of the continuing attempt to bring new critical approaches to fantastic literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313294778
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/11/1997
Series:	Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy , #71
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

C. W. SULLIVAN III is Professor of English at East Carolina University and a member of the Welsh Academy. He is author of Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy (Greenwood, 1989). He is also editor of The Mabinogi: A Book of Essays, Science Fiction for Young Readers (Greenwood, 1993), and As Tomorrow Becomes Today, and coeditor of Herbal and Magical Medicine: Traditional Healing Today. His articles on science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and folklore have been published in a variety of anthologies and jourbanals. Sullivan is past President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and the editor of the Children's Folklore Review.

Table of Contents

Introduction by C. W. Sullivan III
The Dark Self
"Closer Than an Eye": The Interconnectedness of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Colin N. Manlove
Rubén Darío's Short Stories: Autobiography, Fantasy and the Fantastic by Maria A. Salgado
Hoffmann's Fantastic Sandman by Allienne Becker
Horacio Kalibang o los autómatas: A Nineteenth-Century View of Artificial Beings by Nancy M. Kason
Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and the Beast by Faye Ringel
The Unholy Circle: A Jungian Reading of Dracula by Joseph Andriano
Human-Kind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality: Illusion and Self-Deception in the Fiction of Peter S. Beagle by Richard West
Mainstream Dark
"Turbaning That Corner": The Identity Crisis in Paradise Lost, Book I by Jeannette Hume Lutton
The Brood of Mary: Brian Aldiss, Frankenstein, and Science Fiction by Nicholas Ruddick
Native Sons; Regionalism in Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King by Tony Magistrale
H. C. Anderson and George MacDonald: The Perilous Flight of Fantastic Opposites by Glenn Edward Sadler
"Utopia by Innuendo": The Dialogue Between Fantasy and Utopia in Doris Lessing's Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five by Carol Franko
The Dark Arts
Betty Edwards's Soft Satire by Dorothy Joiner
Theater as Informer to the Future in the Works of Harlan Ellison by Sue Hart
The Rites of Passage in Contemporary Vampire Films by Sharon Russell and James Backes
"The Mother Should an Harlot Been": Revisionist Mariology in Two Photographs by Joel-Peter Witkin by Roger J. Mesley
Humor in the Dark
Horrific Humor: The Use of Comic Structure and Humor in Aliens by Eric P. Shaffer and Patrick D. Murphy
Kurt Vonnegut: The Once and Future Satirist by Donald E. Morse
Theory
Postmodernism in Popular Literary Fantasy by Kathryn Hume
Fantastic Tropes in The Folk of the Air by Don Riggs
Genres of Desire: A Prologue to a Theory of Science Fiction by Leo Daugherty
Index

Editorial Reviews

Tends toward rather than broods exclusively on various aspects of the darker side of the human conditions as expressed by and explored in a wide variety of fantastic fiction and art. Explores the human personality; fantastic elements in mainstream literature; expressions in sculpture, theater, film, and photography; humor; and theories of fantasy. Six of the 21 selected essays have been published previously. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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