Dreaming into hyperspace: the Victorian spatial imagination and the origins of modern fantasy in MacDonald and Carroll

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    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 languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationInforming the Inklings
    Subtitle of host publicationGeorge MacDonald and the Victorian roots of modern fantasy
    EditorsMichael Partridge, Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson
    Place of PublicationHamden, USA
    PublisherWinged Lion Press
    Pages129-147
    Number of pages19
    ISBN (Print)9781935688204
    Publication statusPublished - 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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    • 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 proceedingChapterpeer-review

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