Archives par étiquette : société

Parution : Medievalism in English Canadian Identity and Literature

M.J. Toswell, Medievalism in English Canadian Identity and Literature, ARC Humanities Press, 2025.

Cet ouvrage développe les particularités du médiévalisme canadien et son rôle dans la construction d’une identité nationale, en particulier par rapport à d’autres pays anglophones.

Canada has a deep layer of medievalism embedded in its architecture, governance structures, and sociocultural bedrock. This volume distinguishes between Canadian medievalism and its closest neighbours, British and American medievalism, and argues that the ignored or unnoticed medievalism of English Canada derives from its foundation by United Empire Loyalists escaping to the north in the late eighteenth century.

The book considers particular literary and cultural expressions of medievalism—including Gothic architecture, heraldry, ice hockey, and Samuel de Champlain’s lost astrolabe; and the work of Guy Gavriel Kay, Earle Birney, Robertson Davies, Louise Penny, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, and George Longmore—arguing that medievalism remains a potent force in Canadian national identity.

 

Table des matières

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Four Case Studies in Material Culture

Chapter 2. Roots and Branches: Medievalism, Scholarship, History

Chapter 3. Historical Fantasy: Guy Gavriel Kay

Chapter 4. Two Twentieth-Century Titans: Earle Birney and Robertson Davies

Chapter 5. Translations of Beowulf

Chapter 6. The Medieval Modern in Canada Today

Conclusion

Select Bibliography

Index

 

Détails et commandes sur le site de l’éditeur.

Parution : Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Justine Breton (dir.), Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Building a Fantasy Civilization, coll. Perspectives on Fantasy, Bloomsbury, 2025.

A critical deep-drive into conceptions of power and society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, this book brings together experts in fantasy literature, political sciences, economics, philosophy, history, and journalism to consider the intricate social tapestry of one of the most intricate worlds in modern fantasy. Surveying the Discworld’s institutionalised power structures from government and police to civil services, banks and societies, it explores ideas such as language, translation, humour, crowds, community, justice and coercion in the series’ major works. Featuring analyses of novels such as Men at Arms, Equal Rites, Carpe Jugulum, Guards! Guards!, Jingo, Night Watch, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad and many more, this collection illuminates how Pratchett juxtaposed his narratives with contemporary reflections on social constructs. Broken down into parts looking at social power dynamics, building and destroying worlds and the power of language, the book offers a much-needed corrective to the dearth of scholarship on one of fantasy literature’s worldbuilding titans.

 

Table des matières / Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Building a Fantasy Civilization. Introducing Power and Society in the Discworld
Justine Breton
Part 1: Social Power Dynamics
Chapter 1: Collective Strength, Collective Weakness: Crowds and their Uses on the Discworld
Bettina Juszak, York University
Chapter 2: Where the Streets Are Paved with Glod: The Role of Civil Society in Ankh-Morpork Community and Civic Life
Jon Dean, Sheffield Hallam University
Chapter 3: Freedom! Truth! and Justice! In the Big Wahoonie: Ankh-Morpork’s neo-Victorian Urbanity
Helena Esser, Independent Scholar
Chapter 4: (Imaginary) Genealogies of Power as Utopian Incitement: Reading Pratchett with Graeber (and vice versa)
Jann Kraus, Zurich University of Applied Science
Part 2: Tools for Building, Tools for Destroying
Chapter 5: Maps of the Future: Spatial Revolution in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
Chris Lynch Becherer, University of Glasgow
Chapter 6: A ‘Vetinarian’ World Order: Diplomacy, Great Powers and Morals in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series
Guilhem Jean, Independent Scholar
Chapter 7: Political Idealism in the Discworld Novels
Ruchira Mandal, Lady Bradbourne College
Chapter 8: King Carrot and Fantasy Tropes: Refusing Power to Build a Better Society
Justine Breton, University of Lorraine
Part 3: The Power of Language
Chapter 9: Greatness and Small Miseries: Journalism in the Discworld Novels
Jean-Christophe Piot, Independent Scholar
Chapter 10: ‘People listen to me when I’m screaming’: Language and Empowerment in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Anne Hiebert Alton, Central Michigan University
Chapter 11: ‘Let him be whoever he thinks he is’: Magic Conjuring Truth in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters
Sarah Richardson, University of London
Chapter 12: The Power of Stories: Narrative Causality and Coercive Narratives in Pratchett’s Witches books
Yevheniia Orestivna Kanchura, Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University, and Jane Suzanne Carroll, Trinity College
Index

 

Détails et commandes sur le site de l’éditeur.

 

Appel à contributions : Power and Society in the Discworld

Edited volume on Power and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series

We invite proposals for an edited collection of essays on issues of power and society in the fantasy world created by Terry Pratchett in his Discworld series. The book proposal will be submitted to Bloomsbury Academic’s new series “Perspectives on Fantasy”.

Deadline: May 31st, 2023.

 

In his Discworld series, Terry Pratchett depicted a comprehensive – and hilarious – view of an organised society set in a fantasy world, where groups and individuals are moved by various and often conflicting powers, including supernatural forces. Following a few brilliant papers highlighting specific social and political implications of Pratchett’s worlds[1], we intend to propose in this edited collection a wide-ranging approach to the way the Discworld is built alongside social powers, and the way power and society interact with fantasy.

Proposals could tackle topics such as: social movements (for golems or goblins, etc.) and their reception within the Discworld; interactions between society and magical powers (witches, Unseen University, etc.); economic policies; races and their interactions; official forces (Patrician Vetinari, nobility, the Watch, the guilds, etc.); unofficial forces, including groups and individuals (Lady Sybil, Moist von Lipwig, Granny Weatherwax, religious groups, etc.); superpowers and supernatural forces (Death, Time, etc.), their personification and their interactions with society; passive resistance; tyranny vs. democracy; peace vs. war; civilization; fantasy countries; etc. We encourage proposals about individual and collective forms of power, as well as proposals about the social organisation of this fantasy world.

We welcome submissions from various fields, including but not limited to literature, philosophy, economics, history, geography, social studies, gender studies, critical race studies and psychology.

Proposals from 300 to 400 words, with a short author bio, should be sent to Dr Justine Breton, justine.breton [at] univ-reims.fr, by Wednesday May 31st, 2023. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 1st, 2023. Potential enquiries can be sent to the same address.

[1] See for example Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell (eds.), Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett works, Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2014; Marion Rana (ed.), Terry Pratchett’s Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; and, more recently, Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin Leverett (eds.), Terry Pratchett’s ethical worlds: Essays on Identity and Narrative in Discworld and Beyond, Jefferson, McFarland & Co., 2020.