Week Two

Introduction, continued.

From Shamanism to Myth

“Sedna” and “Oki Islands”

(with the exception of Dick and Coleridge, all selections are found in the Fantasy Worlds reader)

From Myth to Epic

From The Iliad: opening lines, the shield of Achilles, epic simile

from The Iliad Book 1.1-52

from The Iliad Book 18.202-214
from The Iliad Book 18.462-616

Outline of The Iliad

Outline of The Odyssey

Week One

Course Introduction

What is Fantasy?
Wikipedia
Outline of Fantasy (Wikipedia)
Article form Philosophy and Literature

Genres of literature
Britannica
List

Fantasy vs. Science Fiction

from shamanism to Fantasy

from myth to Fantasy

from religion to Fantasy

from history to Fantasy

from nostalgia to Fantasy

from politics to Fantasy

from childhood to Fantasy

from archetypes and archetypal relationships to Fantasy

from satire to Fantasy

from biology to Fantasy

from science to Fantasy

from psychology to Fantasy

from Fantasy to... well, to Fantasy

Readings:

“Sedna” and “Oki Islands”

(with the exception of Dick and Coleridge, all selections are found in the Fantasy Worlds reader)

Film:

Allegro Non Troppo



 Allegro Non Troppo - 1976

Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, an elderly satyr repeatedly attempts to cosmetically recapture his youth and virility, all in vain.[1] With each failure, the satyr gets smaller and smaller, until he roams across a vast countryside which turns out to be a woman's body.

Dvořák's Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46, begins in a large community of cave-dwellers. A solitary cave man wants to better himself and builds himself a new home. From this point on, the rest of the community copies everything that he does.  He is annoyed that everyone is able to keep up with his advances so quickly. His attempts to break away from them leads to his planning a bizarre act of mass vengeance with unintended and humorous consequences.

Ravel's Boléro, primordial sugar water at the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle left behind by space travelers attains life, and progresses through fanciful representations of the stages of evolution and history until skyscrapers destroy all that has come before. This segment parallels The Rite of Spring segment from Fantasia, complete with a solar eclipse. Its opening moment was used as the image for the film poster.

Sibelius's Valse triste, a cat wanders in the ruins of a large house. The cat remembers the life that used to fill the house when it was occupied.  Eventually all of these images fade away, as does the cat, just before the ruins are demolished.

Vivaldi's Concerto in C major for 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, Strings and Continuo RV 559, a female bee prepares to dine on a flower in elaborate style replete with utensils and a portable TV, but is continually interrupted by two lovers sitting down for a romantic interlude on the grass. After having her meal interrupted several times, each time being forced to gather up her things and scramble to safety, she finally decides enough is enough and the male lover gets it in the end.

Stravinsky's The Firebird (specifically The Princesses' Khorovod and The Infernal Dance of King Katschey) begins with a lump of clay molded by a monotheistic symbol of the omniscient pyramid, first making a few unsuccessful creatures with overly awkward limbs, then finally the Adam and Eve as portrayed in Genesis. Adam and Eve then transform into cel animation and, as in Genesis, the serpent comes up to them, offering the fruits of knowledge in the form of an apple. After they refuse it the serpent swallows the apple himself. Falling asleep, he is immediately plunged into a nightmare in a hellish environment where he is first tormented by fiery demons and then plagued by things that are supposed to corrupt humankind (sex, alcohol, money, material objects, drugs, violence); he also grows arms and legs and is magicked into a suit and fedora. When the music ends after he wakes up, he is still wearing the suit and hat but after telling Adam and Eve his dream in a fast-motion and incomprehensible manner, he sheds the suit (losing his arms and legs but keeping the hat) and spits up the still-whole apple.

In an epilogue sequence (which features an assortment of short, unidentified orchestral clips instead of a single piece, though Slavonic Dance No. 7 can be very briefly heard again towards the end) the film's host asks an animated Igor-type monster (identified as "Franceschini") to retrieve a finale for the movie from a basement storeroom. Franceschini rejects several of these, but delightedly approves of one which depicts a ridiculously escalating war, ending with the earth exploding. The action returns to the host and the conductor discussing their next project. After a bit of brainstorming the host reveals his latest original and brilliant idea: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the title Sleeping Beauty. This scene turns out to be another finale being watched by Franceschini. After it ends, the serpent from the Firebird Suite pops out and bites him on the nose, and the words "HAPPY END" drop on them, the serpent coming out of the "D".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_Non_Troppo

Week Three

From Myth to Civilization


The Odyssey Book 11

From The Odyssey: Odysseus in the Underworld

Film: Ulysses

Outline of The Odyssey

Week Four

Myth, Anthropology, Religion, and Philosophy 

The Renaissance: Epic, Romance, and Reformation, Part I

John Milton, from Paradise Lost: Opening Lines from Book I; from Book II: Satan, Sin, Death, Chaos… and the Universe

from Paradise Lost Book 1.1-330
from Paradise Lost Book 2.614-1055

 Paradise Lost, with notes.
 

"On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629)  lines 165-236

Paradise Lost (twelve books; 7-8 and 11-12 were the original Books 7 and 10).

1.      Hell: Satan and his troops in defeat.

2.      Hell: the devil’s assembly and Satan’s journey.

3.      Heaven: Divine theology; the approach of Satan to Eden.

4.      Eden: Adam and Eve; Eve recounts her creation; Gabriel challenges Satan.

5.      Eden: Eve’s dream; the arrival of Raphael; Raphael’s narration of the revolt.

6.      Eden: Raphael continues: the Wart in Heaven.

7.      Eden: Raphael continues; the Creation.

8.      Eden: Raphael and Adam discuss astronomy; Adam recounts his creation.

9.      Eden: Temptation and Fall.

10.  Heaven: God sends his Son to Eden; Hell: Satan’s return; Eden: recriminations, followed by repentance.

11.  Heaven: God’s judgments; Eden: the arrival of Michael; the vision of history (up to Flood).

12.  Eden: The vision of history (Flood to Second Coming); Expulsion.

Source:  William Poole, Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost, Harvard UP, 2017. p.115

Week Five

The Renaissance: Epic, Romance, and Reformation, Part II

Film: Dr. Fuastus
Wiki article (play)
Wiki article (film) 
Text of the play.

Week Six

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown.”

Film:  Young Goodman Brown

Film: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

Arthurian Legend

British Library Article
Project Gutenberg Complete Text

English Sources

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (Historia regum Britanniae)  (12^th century, 1135-39)

Wace of Jersey

Layamon

Tristan and Iseult                                                         (12^th century)

            Anglo-Norman, Inspired by Keltic Legend:

                        Deirdre and Naoise

                        Diarmuid Ua Duibhue

                        Grainne

The Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight       (14^th century)

French Sources

Chrétien de Troyes Perceval (Grail story)  (12^th century)

“a Group of Cistercian Monks”(?), Vulgate Cycle       (1210-1230)

            Prose Lancelot

Robert de Boron, Merlin (13^th century)

“Post-Vulgate Grail Romance” (combining Arthurian Romance with the Tristan Romance)

(Mallory’s chief sources were these French romances)

Welsh Sources

Gildas, De excidio et conquest Britanniae, Fall and  Conquest of Britain        (mid-6^th century)

Nennius, Historia Brittonum, History of the Britons (9^th century)

Annales Cambriae, Cabbrian Annals (late 9^th century)

The Mabinogion   (12^th- 13^thcenturies, first English version by Charlotte Guest, 1838-49);

Culhwch and Olwen (12^th century)

“Modern” versions and related stories

Thomas Mallory, Le Morte Darthur   (late 15^th century)

Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin  (1829)

Sources: The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales  (chiefly in Welsh), Cambro-Briton (periodical ca. 1819); The Mabinogion (first English version by Charlotte Guest, 1838-49); Taliesin (first English version by Nash, 1858).

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King       (1842, 1859, 1888)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shallot”           (1832, 1842)

T. H. White, The Once and Future King                      (1958)

Marion Zimmerman Bradley, The Mists of Avalon       (1982)

Themes:

Religion

Myth and Religion

History

Sociology

Psychology

Fantasy(?)

Nostalgia

Week Seven

Romanticism and… Materialism?

William Blake, “The Tyger”

William Blake, “The Ancient Poets”

William Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us”

William Wordsworth, “I wondered lonely as a cloud”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”

Film, Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Hall of Fantasy”

Terms for review:

Carnival of Souls (film)
Sedna, Mistress of the Underworld
A Story of Oki Islands
Homer
John Milton
Paradise Lost
Christopher Marlowe
The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
Shaminism
Epic
   In Media Res
  Invocation of the Muse
  Epic Question
  Epic Simile
Fantasy
Fantasy and Myth
Fantasy and History
Fantasy and Psychology
Religion
Allegro Non Troppo
Ulysses
Doctor Faustus 
Arthurian Legend 1, 2 
Excalibur (film)
Le Morte d'Arthur
John Boorman 
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (art movement)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Young Goodman Brown"
"The  Hall of Fantasy"


 

Week Eight

Midterm

Week Twelve

Utopia and Dystopia
Utopian Literature

Plato's Republic (381 BC)

St Augustine of Hippo, City of God (426 AD)

Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1516)

Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)
James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)
B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948)

 
Dystopian Literature 

Plato's Republic
Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Book III: A Voyage to Laputa, BalniBarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan (1726)

Wells, The Time Machine (1895)

Yevgeny Zamyatin We (1921)

Karel Čapek, R.U.R.  Rossum's Universal Robots (1921)
Franz Kafka,The Trial (1925)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Karel Čapek, The War with the Newts (1936)

Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (1938)  

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength (1945)

Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister (1947)

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by

Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962)

Another List

The Modern World

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)
H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”, “The Crystal Egg”
H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)  , from Supernatural Horror in Literature: Clarke Ashton Smith (1939)
Clark Ashton Smith, "The City of the Singing Flame" (1931)

Clark Ashton Smith Art Gallery

Music, Animation and Fantasy

Film, Allegro Non Troppo
Film: Fantastic Planet