Introduction
Many authors creating elaborate mythic or imagined words, especially in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Examples include Middle Earth, Westeros, Hogwarts, Narnia, Neverland, Oz, the surreal world of Alice in Wonderland, the Marvel Universe, and the Star Wars Galaxy. Examining how authors construct fictional worlds or alternate realities can provide valuable insight into how place and space do not simply provide settings or backdrops, they influence narrative, shape character development, and, in so doing, they become actors in the stories. This bibliography collects a wide range of scholarly monographs that examine these ideas in depth.
Books @ UCF
Children's Literature and Imaginative Geography by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1771123265Publication Date: 2019-01-10Where do children travel when they read a story? In this collection, scholars and authors explore the imaginative geography of a wide range of places, from those of Indigenous myth to the fantasy worlds of Middle-earth, Earthsea, or Pacificus, from the semi-fantastic Wild Wood to real-world places like Canada's North, Chicago's World Fair, or the modern urban garden.
Creation, Migration, and Conquest by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 019928671XPublication Date: 2006-08-10Creation, Migration, and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature explores the Anglo-Saxons' spatial imaginaire; tracing its political, literary, and intellectual backgrounds and analyzing how this imaginaire shapes perceptions and representations of geographical space.
Here Be Dragons by Call Number: General Collection PN3435 .E38 2013ISBN: 0819573221Publication Date: 2013-02-19Fantasy worlds are never mere backdrops. They are an integral part of the work, and refuse to remain separate from other elements. These worlds combine landscape with narrative logic by incorporating alternative rules about cause and effect or physical transformation. They become actors in the drama-interacting with the characters, offering assistance or hindrance, and making ethical demands.
Imaginary Cities by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 022647030XPublication Date: 2017-04-06For as long as humans have gathered in cities, those cities have had their shining--or shadowy--counterparts. Imaginary cities, potential cities, future cities, perfect cities.
Literary Wonderlands by Call Number: General Collection PN56.I44 L58 2016ISBN: 0316316385Publication Date: 2016-11-01A glorious collection that delves deep into the inception, influences, and literary and historical underpinnings of nearly 100 of our most beloved fictional realms.
The Mind's Isle by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1787073033Publication Date: 2017-07-31Taking as its point of departure The Odyssey, Plato's account of Atlantis and The Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, this book examines the profound influence of these works on the development of island fiction as a genre specific to English literature.
Otherworlds by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 0198746008Publication Date: 2016-02-17This book offers a new perspective on the "otherworlds" of medieval literature. These fantastical realms are among the most memorable places in medieval writing, by turns beautiful and monstrous, alluring and terrifying.
A Place Like Mississippi by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1604699582Publication Date: 2021-03-16"This is the book all of us Mississippi writers, dead and alive, need to read. It is indeed a strange but glorious sensation to see your literary and geographic lineage so beautifully and rigorously explored and valued as it's still being created."
The Poetics of Description by Call Number: General Collection PN56.I44 K64 2006ISBN: 1403974896Publication Date: 2007-06-08This book tells a remarkable story that begins in classical antiquity with ecphrasis, the art of describing the world so vividly that the audience could become imaginative eyewitnesses, and the events that caused an ideal of immediacy to be transformed into nearly its opposite, a preoccupation with representation of representation.
The World of DC Comics by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 0815370571Publication Date: 2019-05-14The first sustained study of the DC Comics Multiverse, this book explores its history, meanings, and lasting influence. The multiverse is a unique exercise in world-building: a series of parallel and interactive worlds with a cohesive cosmology, developed by various creators over more than 50 years.
The World of the Walking Dead by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 1351399306Publication Date: 2019-02-08An accessible introduction to the world of The Walking Dead, this book looks across platforms and analytical frameworks to characterize the fictional world of The Walking Dead and how its audiences make use of it.
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Experiencing Fictional Worlds by Call Number: RequestISBN: 902720201XPublication Date: 2019-02-21Experiencing Fictional Worlds is not only the title of this book, but a challenge to reveal exactly what makes the "experience" of literature. This volume presents contributions drawing upon a range of theories and frameworks based on the text-as-world metaphor.
Imagined Landscapes by Call Number: RequestISBN: 0253018382Publication Date: 2015-12-21Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia's cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape.
Literary Geography by Call Number: RequestISBN: 144084254XPublication Date: 2019-08-02This reference investigates the role of landscape in popular works and in doing so explores the time in which they were written.
Narrative Space and Time by Call Number: RequestISBN: 0415705770Publication Date: 2014-03-04Impossible topologies abound in ancient mythologies, from the Australian Aborigines¿ "dream-time" to the multiple-layer universe of the Sumerians. More recently, from Alice¿s adventures in Wonderland to contemporary science fiction¿s obsession with black holes and quantum paradoxes, counter-intuitive spaces are a prominent feature of modern and postmodern narrative.
The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds by Call Number: RequestISBN: 1138638919Publication Date: 2017-10-04This companion provides a definitive and cutting-edge guide to the study of imaginary and virtual worlds across a range of media, including literature, television, film, and games.
Spatialising the Literary Text by Call Number: RequestISBN: 1108487459Publication Date: 2020-07-02Reading and Mapping Fiction offers a fresh approach to the interpretation of literary space and place centred upon the emergence of a fictional map alongside the text in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
