Forms of death in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, and Garth Nix's Old Kingdom novels
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Literature and Aesthetics: Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics Vol. 19, no. 2 (2009), p. 92-104
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: As soon as fantasy writers make factual statements about the nature of their fictional worlds, limits come into play. If this is a world ruled by one omnipotent deity, it is going to be tricky to introduce the Greek gods later on; if magic works by a certain set of rules, it cannot work by conflicting rules without the need for justification; if ghosts exist, some explanation will be required when the narrator asserts that no-one comes back from the dead. This paper explores and evaluates ways in which three contemporary fantasy writers set up and dissolve such limits with regard to the after life. Each of these writers has produced an extended, multi-volume fantasy opus amply establishing rules and limits for its fictional world or worlds: Ursula Le Guin in her six-volume Earthsea series, Philip Pullman in his trilogy, His Dark Materials, and Garth Nix in his Old Kingdom series of novels (four volumes to date). Each of these writers sets up what I shall term a ‘first death’ and a ‘second death’; the second death is presented in their fictions as a final stage of being while the first death, although it may initially seem permanent, turns out to be transitional. Each of these fictions ultimately dissolves the limits that seem to have been set up in the first death, but their strategies of release are arguably not always as liberatory as claimed.
- Description: 2003007948
Australian children's literature
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: A companion to Australian literature since 1900 Chapter 30 p. 417-428
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005825
Haunting the borders of sword and sorcery: Garth Nix's the Seventh Tower
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Gothic in Children's Literature Haunting the Borders Chapter 13 p. 145-155
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- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005729
Self-subversion in Andrew Adamson's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Considering Fantasy Chapter 25 p. 239-247
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- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005822
Two house
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Chapter p.
- Full Text: false
- Description: There is special crowding too in this Abbey beside the river where so many of the poets are cloistered together in Poets' Corner, their shades exceeding the grim confinements of human mortality, their words alive with amusement, anger, joy, celebration, wisdom and wonder. How they talk together and we are still listening to them, here in England, Europe, America, Latin America
Stuckness in the fiction of Mervyn Peake
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: A1
- Description: 2003001250
Kissing the toad in twentieth century children's literature
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Cinderella Transformed: Multiple Voices and Diverse Dialogues in Children's Literature Chapter 23 p. 142-149
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003000947
The solipsistic loop in Carol Matas' and Perry Nodelman's Of Two Minds
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Identity and Alterity in Canadian Literature Chapter 24 p. 147-153
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003000561
The trials and tribulations of two dogsbodies : A Jungian reading of Diana Wynne Jones's Dogsbody
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Diana Wynne Jones : An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom Chapter 13 p. 138-148
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003000188
Fixity and flow in Garth Nix's Sabriel
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature Vol. 11, no. 3 (2001), p. 15-23
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- Reviewed: