Tag Archives: fantasy

Diana Wynne Jones’s Feminist Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: April 19, 2016

Diana Wynne Jones’s “Fire and Hemlock” draws on the Tam Lin story to give women a model for heroism that counters the role assigned to them in traditional fairy tales.

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British and American Fantasy Contrasted

By Robin Bates | Published: January 12, 2016

An “Atlantic” article argues that British fantasy is richer than American fantasy. I agree that they are different and that there are interesting reasons for those differences–but that American fantasy is vibrant as well.

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Donne’s Lovers, Spooky at a Distance

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2015

Tuesday Adam Gopnik makes some nice literary allusions in a recent New Yorker essay-review of George Musser’s Spooky at a Distance, which is about the history of quantum entanglement theory. Entanglement, also known as non-locality and described by Einstein as “spooky at a distance,” claims that two particles of a single wave function can influence each other, even […]

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How Fantasy Saves Our Souls

By Robin Bates | Published: April 13, 2015

Great fantasy can always be seen as oppositional, pushing against prevailing modes of thought and opening up portals into new human possibilities.

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A Fantasy about U.S. Thirst for War

By Robin Bates | Published: April 7, 2015

Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” understands the thirst of those Americans that want to go to war with Iran.

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Erdrich Charts a Third Way for Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: March 31, 2015

L. Frank Baum and Edgar Allen Poe represent the light and the dark strains of American fantasy. But Louise Erdrich introduces a third strain, Native American, to the conversation.

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Yeats & Ireland’s World of Faery

By Robin Bates | Published: March 17, 2015

Yeats’ “Stolen Child” longs for the lost world of faery but also finds something precious in the here and now world of Ireland.

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Melville’s Parable of American Denial

By Robin Bates | Published: April 7, 2014

Melville’s “Benito Cereno” captures the contradictions of today’s conservative extremists.

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How to Analyze Fantasy Projections

By Robin Bates | Published: April 3, 2014

What fantasy means in 15 simple steps.

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