ENGL 103 A03: Fantasy and Reality: Conversations and Contestations

L. Robertson

The specific focus of this section will be on texts that explore and inhabit the complicated and shifting boundary between fantasy and reality. What is the relationship between the realistic and the fantastical and the mythical? What are the moral and ethical issues at stake in the realistic and in the fantastical or the mythical? What purposes does each serve, in our lives and in the stories we tell? Through a variety of texts-including genres like the fairy tale, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and the crime novel-written across a wide period of time, from the Renaissance to the present, we will examine how and to what purposes different writers have used fantasy and the mythic in their work.