{"product_id":"re-enchanted-the-rise-of-childrens-fantasy-literature-in-the-twentieth-century-9781517906580","title":"Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children's Fantasy","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eThe Hobbit\u003c\/i\u003e to Harry Potter, how fantasy harnesses the cultural power of magic, medievalism, and childhood to re-enchant the modern world\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   \u003cp\u003eWhy are so many people drawn to fantasy set in medieval, British-looking lands? This question has immediate significance for millions around the world: from fans of\u003ci\u003e Lord of the Rings\u003c\/i\u003e, Narnia, Harry Potter, and \u003ci\u003eGame of Thrones\u003c\/i\u003e to those who avoid fantasy because of the racist, sexist, and escapist tendencies they have found there. Drawing on the history and power of children’s fantasy literature, \u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e argues that magic, medievalism, and childhood hold the paradoxical ability to re-enchant modern life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFocusing on works by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, and Nnedi Okorafor, \u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e uncovers a new genealogy for medievalist fantasy—one that reveals the genre to be as important to the history of English studies and literary modernism as it is to shaping beliefs across geographies and generations. Maria Sachiko Cecire follows children’s fantasy as it transforms over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—including the rise of diverse counternarratives and fantasy’s move into “high-brow” literary fiction. Grounded in a combination of archival scholarship and literary and cultural analysis, \u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e argues that medievalist fantasy has become a psychologized landscape for contemporary explorations of what it means to grow up, live well, and belong. The influential “Oxford School” of children’s fantasy connects to key issues throughout this book, from the legacies of empire and racial exclusion in children’s literature to what Christmas magic tells us about the roles of childhood and enchantment in Anglo-American culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e engages with critical debates around what constitutes high and low culture during moments of crisis in the humanities, political and affective uses of childhood and the mythological past, the anxieties of modernity, and the social impact of racially charged origin stories.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e is essential for the study of the fantastic. While other recent critical studies have focused on fantasy’s origins before 1900 or the genre’s place in the contemporary literary landscape, Maria Sachiko Cecire focuses the reader on the influence of the Oxford School fantasists, also known as the ‘Inklings,’ who mapped the world of story through perspectives influenced by their times. Thus, fantasy was left behind while the rest of the world changed. \u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us of the ways that English-language fantasy is, was, and can continue to be an instrument of empire. Engaging, thorough, and absolutely necessary.\"—Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Full of revelatory scholarship on J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman, and their heirs, \u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted\u003c\/i\u003e makes the case for scholarship itself at the heart of fantasy. No one will read \u003ci\u003eThe Lord of the Rings\u003c\/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eHis Dark Materials\u003c\/i\u003e again without realizing just how much Oxford itself—its libraries and its landscape—scripted their imaginations and how its syllabi inspire, to this day, Harry Potter, \u003ci\u003eThe Magicians\u003c\/i\u003e, and beyond.\"—Seth Lerer, author of \u003ci\u003eChildren's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In the twenty-first century, fantasy has become a way of speaking, in fiction (adults or children's) and outside it. Here Maria Sachiko Cecire interrogates the Oxford roots of something that has become, like wallpaper, part of our world, and helps us to see the landscape of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, of Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman, and understand how that landscape became universal, the ways it buoys us up and the ways that it fails us.\"—Neil Gaiman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Cecire calls upon readers to acknowledge the dangers of the Oxford School’s project while recognizing the cultural power its members harnessed. She encourages us to embrace and explore new ways of expanding the scope of the tropes of children’s fantasy to become more inclusive in the ways it reaches into the past to find magic in a difficult contemporary world.\"—\u003ci\u003eMedievally Speaking\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Effectively, Cecire proves that in terms of modern children’s fantasy literature, all roads lead to the Oxford School.\"—\u003ci\u003eCHOICE\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Cecire illustrates brilliantly how Tolkien and Lewis took the building blocks of medieval literature and historical linguistics and created alternative worlds.\"—\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"An important and endlessly engaging book that will provoke much further thought and discussion.\"—\u003ci\u003eMythlore\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A compelling case both for training our critical attention on medieval and medievalist literature and for expanding the texts we read, teach, study, and share.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Medieval Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eRe-Enchanted \u003c\/i\u003ereveals how magic mystifies ideologies, embedding antimodernist, nationalist, colonialist ideas in children’s fantasy, concealing them in an invisibility cloak of (white) childhood innocence. It’s an essential book for anyone who wants to unlearn the hidden assumptions of our own childhood reading and find better stories for the next generation. \"—\u003ci\u003eALH Online Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409705443671,"sku":"9781517906580","price":20.69,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781517906580.jpg?v=1730507745","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/re-enchanted-the-rise-of-childrens-fantasy-literature-in-the-twentieth-century-9781517906580","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}