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A Critical Companion to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere"Bridges to Fantasy: Neverwhere and Genre

A Critical Companion to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere": Bridges to Fantasy: Neverwhere and Genre [Neverwhere provides an excellent introduction to fantasy and presents a useful opportunity to illustrate many of the genre’s defining features. In this chapter, Brian Attebery’s characteristics of fantasy, outlined in his 1992 Strategies of Fantasy study, are introduced, as are Farah Mendlesohn’s categories of fantasy from her Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008). After exploring Neverwhere’s generic features, the novel is then considered more broadly in relation to the familiar framework of the Hero’s Journey, also referred to as the “Monomyth,” as popularized by Joseph Campbell. Neverwhere is shown to map quite closely onto the stages of this narrative pattern, illustrating how modern fantasy works can nevertheless remain deeply entrenched in narrative history and familiar patterns. In this sense, like the overlapping temporalities of London Below, Neverwhere exceeds its particular temporal moment and taps into the deep structure of fantasy.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Critical Companion to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere"Bridges to Fantasy: Neverwhere and Genre

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
ISBN
978-3-030-96457-3
Pages
15 –29
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-96458-0_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Neverwhere provides an excellent introduction to fantasy and presents a useful opportunity to illustrate many of the genre’s defining features. In this chapter, Brian Attebery’s characteristics of fantasy, outlined in his 1992 Strategies of Fantasy study, are introduced, as are Farah Mendlesohn’s categories of fantasy from her Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008). After exploring Neverwhere’s generic features, the novel is then considered more broadly in relation to the familiar framework of the Hero’s Journey, also referred to as the “Monomyth,” as popularized by Joseph Campbell. Neverwhere is shown to map quite closely onto the stages of this narrative pattern, illustrating how modern fantasy works can nevertheless remain deeply entrenched in narrative history and familiar patterns. In this sense, like the overlapping temporalities of London Below, Neverwhere exceeds its particular temporal moment and taps into the deep structure of fantasy.]

Published: Jun 1, 2022

Keywords: Brian Attebery; Fantasy; Farah Mendlesohn; Genre; Hero’s Journey; Monomyth; Neil Gaiman; Neverwhere; Portal-Quest

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