Activities per year
Abstract
This chapter posits that the origins of the modern fantasy genre can be located in the Victorian correlation between the space of dreams and the supernatural world, and the Victorian's exploration of these spaces through the new development of non-Euclidean geometry and its related notions of higher-dimensional space, or hyperspace. Using historicised literary analysis, this chapter identifies crucial turning points in the literary exploration of these ideas in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and George MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith. Through their exploration of these new kinds of spaces, this chapter argues, these texts mark the emergence of the secondary worlds associated with the modern fantasy genre.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Informing the Inklings |
| Subtitle of host publication | George MacDonald and the Victorian roots of modern fantasy |
| Editors | Michael Partridge, Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson |
| Place of Publication | Hamden, USA |
| Publisher | Winged Lion Press |
| Pages | 129-147 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781935688204 |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- literature
- Fantasy fiction--History and criticism
- fantasy genre
- dreams
- dream-visions
- space
- space and place
- genre
- Victorian England
- nineteenth century
- supernatural
- literary criticism
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Gothic and Fantastic Literature: A Weird and Wonderful History (Invited Talk for Ashfield Library, Sydney)
Kirstin Mills (Speaker)
19 Feb 2025Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
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‘Mapping the Margins of the Mind: Dreams, the Supernatural, and Higher-Dimensional Space in Lewis Carroll.’ (Presentation at the Conference of the Australasian Victorian Studies Association, Ballarat)
Kirstin Mills (Speaker)
Jul 2016Activity: Talk or presentation › Presentation
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‘From Somnial Space to Hyperspace: Coleridge’s Theories of Dreaming and the Imagination in Kingsley and MacDonald.’ (Presentation at the University of Cambridge, UK)
Kirstin Mills (Speaker)
Jul 2016Activity: Talk or presentation › Presentation
Research output
- 1 Chapter
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Fairies and Science
Mills, K., 2025, (Accepted/In press) Fairies: a companion. Piatti-Farnell, L. & Bacon, S. (eds.). Peter Lang Publishing, (Genre Fiction and Film Companions).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review