Archive for: THE FANTASTIC IN CULTURE

Relying on recent theoretical work in the field of critical animal studies and ecocriticism, the paper discusses several fantasies across different media and genres (a comic book series, a young adult novel, and an animated film), whose common characteristic is a critical stance towards anthropocentrism, also known, tellingly, as “human exceptionalism”, “human supremacy”, and “human chauvinism”. The selected corpus consists of Neil Gaiman’s “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, Hannah Moskowitz’s “Teeth”, and Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke”. Dissimilar as they are, these fantasies share common thematic concern with the relationship between the human and the nonhuman – primarily animals – as well as commitment to challenging the notions of natural, just and desirable human supremacy over all other forms of life. In the selected works, human exceptionalism is challenged by unmasking human exceptional brutality at its root,and, perhaps more unnervingly, by the exploration of the fundamentalkinship between human and nonhuman animals. Although these popular fantasies do not voice explicit or simple ecological messages, due to the above mentioned concerns, they function as ecocritical texts as well. In the context of the global environmental crisis, it is in this ecocritical potential that some relevance of fantasy arguably lies.

The French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau often used the motifs of fantastic beings and animals in his works, amongst which the unicorn found its place. Moreau got the inspiration for the unicorn motif after a visit to the Cluny Museum in Paris, in which six medieval tapestries with the name “The Lady and the Unicorn” were exhibited. Relying on the French Middle Age heritage, Moreau has interpreted the medieval legend of the hunt for this fantastic beast (with the aid of a virgin) in a new way, close to the art of Symbolism and the ideas of the cultural and intellectual climate of Paris at the end of the 19th century. In the Moreau’s paintings “The Unicorn” and “The Unicorns”, beautiful young nude girls are portrayed in the company of one or multiple unicorns. Similarly to the lady on the medieval tapestry, they too gently caress the animal, showing a close and sensual relationship between them. Although they were rid of their clothes, the artist donned lavish capes, crowns and jewellery on them, alluding to their privileged social status. Their beauty, nudity and closeness with the unicorns ties them to the theme of the femme fatal, which was often depicted in the Symbolist art forms. Showing the fairer sex as beings closer to the material,instinctual and irrational, Moreau has equated women and animals, as is the case with these paintings. Another important theme of the Symbolic art forms which can be seen on the aforementioned paintings is nature,wild and untouched. The landscape in the paintings shows a harmony between the unrestrained nature and the heroes of the painting, freed from strict moral laws of the civil society, or civilization in general.Putting the ladies and the unicorns in an ideal forest landscape, Moreau paints an intimate vision of an imaginary golden age, in this case the Middle Age, through a harmonic relationship of unicorns, women and nature. In that manner, Moreau’s unicorns tell a fairy tale of a modern European man at the end of the 19th century: a fairy tale of harmony,sensuality and beauty, hidden in the realms of imagination and dreams.

This paper analyses Diana Wynne Jones’s use of the Arthurian tradition in her novel Hexwood and the links she establishes with the contemporary traditions of the fantasy novel for children and science fiction. By employing a complex non-linear narration and a rich network of intertextual allusions ranging from Thomas Mallory and Edmund Spenser to T. H. White, Wynne Jones creates an unusual and success fulgenre amalgam. The central concept of the novel, a version of virtual reality where individuals adopt false identities and act accordingly,enables a highly uncommon self-aware use of motifs adopted from myth and literature.