Worlds So Strange and Diverse: Towards a Genological Taxonomy of Non-mimetic Literature
This book represents an analysis of contemporary fantasy (non-mimetic) literature in all its richness and diversity, and offers a preliminary definition of the major fields of taxonomical interest, in addition to marking some of the unmapped territories of “fantastic” fiction. In its first part, the book presents an overview of all major previous theoretical discussions of the issue, particularly those by Tzvetan Todorov, Rosemary Jackson, Darko Suvin, Brian Attebery, Marek Oziewicz and Farah Mendlesohn. The second part of the book provides an interesting comprehensive taxonomy of its own, based on the notion of supragenological types of literature, first introduced by Andrzej Zgorzelski.
Grzegorz Trębicki, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland. His academic interests include non-mimetic literature (especially secondary world fantasy), as well as theory of literature. His articles and reviews have been published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, Extrapolation, Mythlore, and Science Fiction Studies.
“Trębicki presents an excellent survey of existing taxonomies of fantasy literature and their shortcomings. He proposes in their place a more ambitious schema of genological categories of contemporary non-mimetic literature, in the process interrogating the various points of overlap between genres that have traditionally been treated as separate, notably fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The discussion is grounded in the author's wide-ranging reading, evidenced by the diverse textual examples cited throughout.”
Terri Doughty
Vancouver Island University, Canada
Buy This Book
