Yet, another poll or question ... thingymajig

[kippurbird]

Would anyone take this class if it were offered at your school?

Novels through Fantasy

 

 

Introduction

 

            Genre fiction has long been maligned as not real literature. Fantasy comes at the very bottom of this genre heap as people tend to say things like, “all fantasy is cliché’.  But while this may be true in some aspects, it’s more that people mistake the tools or tropes of fantasy for clichés. Just like any other sort of writing genre, fantasy has its clichés and tropes, but it’s just easier to confuse the two.  After all, mystery stories would hardly be a mystery without the “detective” character and the western without the “lone cowboy”.  However, because some of the tropes of fantasy are rather blatant, it allows for the examination of what makes a novel and how to identify a cliché.

 

 

Course Objectives

 

            This course will explore what makes a fantasy story, and through that identify what different things go into making a story and clichés that can be found in all sorts of novels. They will also examine fantasy and regular fiction novels to discover the similarities and differences between the two using literary criticism methods.

 

 

Text books

 

Literary and Cultural Theory, by Donald Hall

A Reader’s Manifesto by B.R. Myers

The tough guide to fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones

Other primary texts yet to be decided.

 

 

Topics to be covered:

 

            Assumptions: What the reader will assume until you let them know differently and why you need to let them know!

 

            Plot vs Story: What is a plot and what’s a story? How is a story created from a plot?

 

            Clichés: Why do you use them and when you do how to make them different?

 

            Heroes: How not turn your Hero into an all powerful knowitall

 

            Bad Guys: How to avoid ending up on the Evil Overlord list and why this is good to do. (Or how to prevent your bad guys from being stupid)

 

            Setting, Flora and Fauna: Zombie Horses and how to avoid them. (Or how to create believable settings)

 

            Magic: Building a rule system and why “It’s magic” just doesn’t work.

 

            Character growth and story changes: Looking at what happens when the story doesn’t go the way you planned it, and how not to force the writing.

 

            Character Death: When do you kill someone and why?

Comments

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting! Why'd you ask? You going to teach a class?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Maybe! The department head asked me to do a write up, so this is my write up.

[carolpent.livejournal.com]

Totally.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[gundamkiwi.livejournal.com]

YES.

I would totally take a class like that. It sounds like it's made of equal parts Win and Awesome.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Win and Awesome?! Yay!

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

The title alone would get me interested. If I saw the zombie horses there would be no way that I wouldn't try my hardest to take it or at least audit (I'm only a dabbler when it comes to English) if I were given the choice.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Because every thing's better with zombies!

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

Are you planning to focus primarily on the prejudice against high/sword & sorcery fantasy, or against fantastic elements overall?

I think that the prejudice against fantasy is partly that it's cliched, but also that it's "not real" and "escapist" and "less work, cause you can just make everything up". Furthermore, fantasy is popular (see; Harry Potter) and there's a real antipathy towards anything popular in the more educated, elitist groups of society. Admitting you write fantasy in a college creative writing class is similar to admitting you want to try out for America's Next Top Model, or that you regularly watch MTV; you feel like people will assume you're dumb and treat you contemptuously for it. Fantasy is traditionally fast-paced, vivid and entertaining, while literary fiction likes to present itself as introspective, and "thought provoking". There are two ways to attack this argument: 1) that many fantasy stories are, in fact, introspective and thought provoking, and 2) literature meant for entertainment still has merit.

In either case, I highly recommend adding GK Chesterton's essay "In Defense of Penny Dreadfuls" which is about why popular fantastic literature is more essential to society than literary fiction. There are also a number of essays & blog entries floating around the Web discussing the usage of terms such as "futurist" and "magical realism" to avoid the labels "science fiction' and "fantasy".

You should check out writers like Kelly Link, Theodora Goss, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Jonathan Carroll, who all kind of straddle the line between genre & literary fiction. You can also incorporate books like The Time Traveler's Wife and The Handmaid's Tale -- they have fantastical elements, but they're written in a literary style, so which category should they fall in? Neil Gaiman has a short story in "Fragile Things" (the title's something long and ridiculous like "Faceless Brides of the Dread House of Dark Desire") that's a very clever satire of this entire conundrum.

Also, I feel like your "Course objectives" and "Topics to be covered" actually belong to two very different classes (one a literary analysis/criticism class, the other a writing class) and you might want to either show the connection between them more clearly when you revise, or indeed consider whether they do connect enough to belong in the same syllabus.

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

Just looked it up -- it's called "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire".

If you want to modify the class to "vilified forms of story-telling and why they're just as cool as literary fic, honest" you can also bring up the fact that the Sandman issue "A Midsummer Night's Dream" won a short story award, and upset everyone cause it was a comic book.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

You seem to know more about this class stuff than I do.

I want to use the class and the fantasy cliches to expose and work around the cliches in other types of literature as well as to help explore what makes a novel a novel. Fantasy novels have those sort of elements right on the surface and are easy to see where in other sorts of literature they're not.

Does that makes sense?

I think part of the problem is that I started going at it one way and then changed my mind half way through.

And I thank you for your input! I want to make this really good.

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

Gaiman's "Forbidden Brides" is screamingly funny (okay, at least to me), and yes, definitely plays up the realist-escapist struggle. Such a marvelous twist.

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

Yep!

There do seem to be some minor typos in the phrasing, though. And the course objectives make it seem more like an analysis of fantasy, while the topics to be covered make it seem like a course on writing fantasy.

Still, I'd take it.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yeah. One of the reasons why I put it up here. If you could point out a few?

[prototypical]

I would take it.

Then again, I'm also the guy who's currently analyzing video games for a literature class.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I write academic papers on fan fiction... so, we're all good.

[loopily.livejournal.com]

Granted I do a science but I'd so take this as an extra optional module if it appeared at my uni (non-relevant to your course credits FTW!).

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yay! ^_^

[alexseanchai]

Sign me up!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Okie. I'm going to have a full class it seems. XD

[liritarofrohan.livejournal.com]

Hell. Yes.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*waves* Long time no see!

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

I sure would!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Woo!

[subieko.livejournal.com]

HELL yes I'd take it! Dude, I WISH my school offered that course...*sighs*

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I hope my school offers this course.

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

YES.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
*falls over from yessing*

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Soooo... is that a yes?

[trinadi.livejournal.com]

This sounds so much better than the Writer's Craft course I'm currently taking. I would definitely sign up for such an awesome class. o__o

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

:D Yay! I'm being awesome.

[cazrolime.livejournal.com]

I would take it! :D :D :D

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Woo!

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

I took a sci-fi/fantasy lit course in college. It was so popular that UVM went from one section of the class to six sections (divided between two professors), plus a spinoff class ("Tolkein's Cosmos") and an annual Tolkein Symposium sponsored by the English Department. So yeah, there's definitely a market for classes like the one you're suggesting. If you're interested, I can probably wrangle you a syllabus or two, so you can see what they've been doing that's worked so well.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It's surprising how popular fantasy classes are.

[dryaunda.livejournal.com]

Looks great. I bet you'll surprise the students when you focus on the actual course material and not "Why Western Civilization is Bad" (Answer: we focus on making stuff instead of living in religious communes).

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Religious communes are boring.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

My fantasy collection and tastes are eclectic, so it'd be everything I can find or think is reasonable for a class.

On Fairy Stories is love.