Escaping the Influence of Narnia: Children's Fantasy Before the Second World War

Interviewee

Farah Mendlesohn

Files

Interviewer

USF Libraries

Publication Date

4-30-2012

Abstract

Dr. Farah Mendlesohn, Hugo Award-winning British academic and writer on science fiction, discusses the difficulty a critic has in escaping the sense of developmental inevitability. Reading the work of students, reading the work of critics, Mendelsohn argues that one cannot help feeling that the portal fantasy is the "natural" form of the children's fantasy, that all literary roads led to Narnia. Reading Geoffrey Trease's Tales Out of School (1948), however, provides an understanding of fantasy that is untainted by expectation. The lecture explored how to think oneself back to a time in which Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It was new, and no one knew that if you went through an Amulet you'd end up in Ancient Egypt.

Keywords

Fantasy fiction, English

Holding Location

University of South Florida

Language

English

Format

video/mp4

Identifier

U41-00007

Recommended Citation

Mendlesohn, Farah, "Escaping the Influence of Narnia: Children's Fantasy Before the Second World War" (2012). USF Library Presentations and Lectures. 29.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/usf_lib_lectures/29