Fritz Leiber's story about the ghosts of the modern city.
Tag: Charles de Lint
Underworld as Otherworld: Combined and Uneven Development in Charles de Lint’s Urban Fantasy Fiction
While a text asking you to believe in fairies and spirits might seem flaky, seeing as this gives us no solid program to reclaim the city, such faith does awaken the desire to see the postmodern, uneven city restored from its ruins
World Fantasy Convention 2015, Part II: My interview with Charles de Lint
Last week I talked about Guy Gavriel Kay reading from his upcoming historical fantasy Children of the Earth and Sky at the World Fantasy Convention 2015 at Saratoga Springs, NY. This week, I continue my account of the weekend's events and provide a paraphrase of my interview with Charles de Lint. First, allow me to talk …
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MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part IV: The Conclusion
The final day of MythCon 46 was Monday August 3rd, during which I only took notes on one presentation: Vicki Ronn on "Graphic King Arthur," that is, the history of King Arthur comic books. Ronn presented a series of comics featuring or starring the mythical king, evaluating each for the quality of its illustrations, story, …
Continue reading MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part IV: The Conclusion
Forests of the Heart by Charles de Lint
Does magic exist in the contemporary world? Charles de Lint's mythic fiction brings supernatural beings into the context of the everyday and Forests of the Heart explores the contact between ordinary people and what he calls Mystery. Bettina and Adelita are sisters, both partly Mexican, partly Indios, and raised by their grandmother to see la époco del …
Part II: A Multicultural Utopia: Historicizing New Fantasy in Charles de Lint’s Moonheart
The following is the second part of a presentation I gave for this year's MA colloquium. I have included the accompanying PowerPoint file as well. Historicizing Moonheart Presentation A Multicultural Utopia: Historicizing New Fantasy in Charles de Lint's Moonheart [...] The narrative structure at work during Mal'eka's seige is part of a larger rhetorical structure …
Part I: A Multicultural Utopia: Historicizing New Fantasy in Charles de Lint’s Moonheart
The following is the first part of a presentation I gave for this year's MA colloquium. I have included the accompanying PowerPoint file as well. Historicizing Moonheart Presentation A Multicultural Utopia: Historicizing New Fantasy in Charles de Lint's Moonheart “Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is …
Greenmantle by Charles de Lint
What happens when you combine Robert Graves's The White Goddess with Martin Scorsese's mafia flick Goodfellas? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be far from Charles de Lint's 1988 'mythic fiction' novel Greenmantle. Called the father of urban fantasy, Charles de Lint is the author of dozens of novels that combine fantasy with mainstream fiction. …
Folklore and Graffiti: A (Potential) Study of Spatial Tactics and Urban Fantasy (Part II)
When we left off last week, I was trying to prove that graffiti interrupts the rational order of the city, as a spatial tactic, and therefore can be compared to urban fantasy, inasmuch as it too subverts conventional "consensus reality." I quoted Bramley Dapple in Charles de Lint's short story “Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair,” who says, …
Folklore and Graffiti: A (Potential) Study of Spatial Tactics and Urban Fantasy (Part I)
While conducting my research into urban fantasy, the subject of my SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Committee) grant proposal, I was stricken by a sudden inspiration. A few images and lines from scholarly texts united in my mind and I saw something bold in the connections. While the following essay is in no sense …
Matthew Rettino 