Speculative Mimesis in Fantasy Literature: Rethinking Relations Between Fiction and Reality

Abstract

With perceptions of reality in the 21st-century increasingly seen as pluralistic and a matter of interpretation, this open access book identifies fantasy literature as a uniquely and highly effective form of storytelling for engaging with our contemporary sense of reality in all its fluidity and complexity.Proposing a new theory of fantasy’s relationship with our reality as a speculative form of mimesis, Elise Kraatila demonstrates how the genre exemplifies literary ways of engaging with the complexities of our contemporary sense of reality by means of “what if?” propositions, grand-scale scenario models, imaginative world-building and thought experiments.Discussing works of 21st-century fantasy by celebrated authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, N. K. Jemisin, Joe Abercrombie and Lev Grossman,Speculative Mimesis in Fantasy Literaturelays bare the complexity and interpretive ambiguity that characterizes the relationship between fantasy fiction, the art of storytelling, and our contemporary sense of reality at large. Illuminating how these contemporary storytellers turn to the expressive repertoire of fantasy fiction to explore topical issues from global inequality to climate crisis and the 'post-truth' breakdown of our conception of reality, this book positions fantasy as a major participant in contemporary responses to our ideas of reality with the power to make actual change. Critically acknowledging and interrogating this most popular genre and the ontological and epistemic force of its narratives, Kraatila offers a perspective to fantasy world-building as a form of literary mimesis that highlights the complex and historically changeable conceptions of what it means for fiction to represent reality more generally.