Reading Length in Fantasy Fiction (Perspectives on Fantasy)

Reframing debates surrounding long narratives to explore their impact, this book develops a critical vocabulary for discussing the formal, social, and political affordances of length and duration in fantasy novels, and by extension, other genres. Beloved by fans, fantasy books frequently receive dismissive treatment from book reviewers and academics. For literary critics, lengthy narratives have long posed problems: for aesthetic critics, they are too sprawling and unstructured; for the politically engaged, they are suspect as part of a culture industry that commodifies texts. Reading Length in Fantasy Fiction switches up this discussion of long narratives, exploring their use of repetitions, narrative rhythms, and complexly ramifying structures to shape readers’ perspectives on such concepts as historical causation, group inclusion, the conflict between traditional values and innovation, and human agency in relation to a complex social totality.