Mary Hoffman has masterfully used the conventions of fantasy genre to explore ideas about life that we can all relate to. We often hear that truth is stranger than fiction. Yet it is possible for fiction to go beyond reality. That’s what happens when worlds are imagined that combine history with fantasy. Mary Hoffman’s bright and suspenseful novel Stravaganza: City of Masks is a great example of the fantasy genre, complete with magic, talismans, time travel, and mysterious circumstances.
Yolen has enabled her readers to understand the value of the past for the present and to witness both the true horrors as well as the acts of courage in her novel Briar Rose. A fairy tale may seem a work of fiction, but it can contain truths of horrific events. This can be seen in the way that Yolen uses the character
Fairy Tales in Literature Jane Yolen has chosen to write in the fairy tale genre to help young adults learn about a horrific time in history, the Holocaust. Fairytales are stories that have survived for centuries. The author feels that by retelling the Holocaust in this genre she can help preserve this time in history for years to come. Fairy tales can be used to tell a larger story for example, the fairytale of Briar Rose in and of itself disguised the horrors of the Holocaust. When presented in the manner of a fairy tale the teens and adults can look at the story from a different perspective.
Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply. Brando Skyhorse uses magical realism in The Madonnas of Echo Park. Magical realism is a style of writing in which the boundaries between the real world and the magical world are vague and often completely absent. The Madonnas of Echo Park is a perfect example of magical realism in that Brando Skyhorse creates fictional families and puts them in real life situations. Echo Park, Skyhorse’s hometown, is the setting for his interconnected story collection.
Allusions in The Picture of Dorian Gray Posted in The Picture of Dorian Gray with tags Allusions, Faust, Gyges' ring,Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare Allusions, Tannhäuser, The Picture of Dorian Gray,The Republic on December 16, 2008 by tammanyb While The Picture of Dorian Gray is a work created in the mind of Oscar Wilde, many aspect’s of the story have been borrowed from other texts. This is not unusual in the world of literature. When someone reads a fantastic piece, they may become inspired by it and rewrite it, adding their owns twists and plots along the way. In The Republic, Glaucon and Adeimantus present the myth of Gyges’ ring. This myth is presented in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
We can live vicariously through romantic fictions, much as we can through daydreams. Terrifying novels and nightmares affect us in much the same way, plunging us into an atmosphere that continues to cling, even after the last chapter has been read — or the alarm clock has sounded. The notion that dreams allow such psychic explorations, of course, like the analogy between literary works and dreams, owes a great deal to the thinking of Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychoanalyst who in 1900 published a seminal essay, The Interpretation of Dreams. But is the reader who feels that Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is dreamlike — who feels that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is nightmarish — necessarily a Freudian literary critic? To some extent the answer has to be yes.
Mary Shelley’s gothic promethean novel, Frankenstein (1818), was released during the industrial revolution as romanticism was thriving, while Ridley Scott’s futuristic sci-fi Blade runner (1992) grew with the dawning of a capitalistic increasingly globalised and technologically driven society. The comparative study of these texts encompasses themes of humanity and playing God through a tone of moral warning and allows the responder to explore how similar content in different contexts will reflect changing, but also constant values. Through the use of filmic techniques, Scott demonstrates how nature and religion are absent in a world overrun by consumerism and technology. Due to her context, Shelley alternatively uses imagery and allusions to hint at the consequences humanity will suffer if they try to better God through the misuse of science and the corruption of nature. Both of these texts reflect the distinctive contexts in which they were written; although separated by over 100 years of history, they still present similar issues and dilemmas which affected the form and features of the individual texts.
A book that rings true attracts readers because it is able to allow the reader to imagine the scenario, a book that did this to me was Tangerine by Edward Bloor. In Tangerine, the author uses realistic situations to build up the plot of the story. Early use of realism strengthens the connection between the reader and the protagonist while allowing the end to be fictional and having the reader feels as if part of the story. Literary tools that are used to help support the connection are age, hobbies, setting, and character emotions and actions. In the novel Tangerine, the age of the protagonist, 12, is the age of the targeted audience are very similar.
Expressing History and Society through Magic Realism Techniques Magic realism is related to but different from surrealism. Both of them use imagination, along with fairy tales, and legends to create mythological setting and plot. However, in magic realism, the imagination is based on reality. In Alejo Carpentier’s “the kingdom of this world”, characters, events, plot that author created mostly can find in Haiti’s history. Gerald Martin (1989) point out, “Magic realism is a different approach to looking at thing”.
Magical elements in Rushdie’s The Firebird’s Nest Salman Rushdie’s short story, The Firebird’s Nest, evokes myths and Indian traditions blending reality with imagination, and thus representing a significant piece of magic realism. In this genre of fiction, magical elements merge with real life, creating a feeling of credibility in spite of the absurdity of certain events; it expresses emotions in such an intense way that the reader is willing to suspend his disbelief and to entreat the impossible as possible. The present paper seeks to examine the contribution of magical elements to the interpretation of Rushdie’s story, and to provide an approach to the possible understanding of unrealistic events. Magical elements permeate the story converging towards one main symbol, that of the firebird, a mythological bird, that has a special connotation with death: it ignites at the end of its life and then it is reborn from the ashes, representing immortality. Women in the Indian community appearing in the story die this way as well: “[w]omen catch fire and burn” (231).