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
Tag: First Nations
World Fantasy Convention 2015, Part III: Challenging the Canon
Last week I wrote about my interview with Charles de Lint at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs. Today, I wrap up my discussion of the conference with some comments on the fantasy canon and the awards ceremony, which have of late been the subject of some controversy. My MA thesis is on fantasy …
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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, …
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MythCon 46: The Arthurian Mythos Part II: Race, Raciness, and the Fifty Shades of Charles Williams
For this post I apologize immediately for the title and would like to state that most (the greater half anyway) of this post will be concerned with how Tolkien treats race in his fiction--not how Charles Williams is racy. The lurid revelations about Charles Williams, 'The Oddest Inkling,' that have now come forth were just impossible a) to ignore and b) …
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 …
Joseph Boyden on his Identity and Origins
Monday at the D.B. Clarke Theatre in the Hall Building on Concordia University campus, Joseph Boyden talked about his identity and origins--both as a writer and a man of mixed Irish-Ojibwe blood. He was accompanied by renowned conversationalist Kate Sterns and Globe and Mail book reviewer Jared Bland, "Who are you?" opened Sterns, a direct …
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
We had magic before the crows came. Joseph Boyden begins The Orenda with an allusion to the lost world of Huronia that is suggestive of a certain insight proposed in John Crowley's Aegypt sequence: the world was not always what it has since become. Huronia, the land of the Wendat nation, has since vanished, along …
Matthew Rettino 