Modern Fantasy Writing

Dear Colleagues,

Perhaps no other literary genre occupies a similarly unique position at the crossroads of tradition and modernity as the genre of fantasy. On the one hand, it remains deeply rooted in a variety of premodern literary traditions, while, on the other, it reaches out into new imaginative horizons emerging in the wake of the most recent technological and intellectual trends and developments.

As a result, side by side with examples of heroic, or high fantasy works, which explore the heritage of the heroic literary tradition of the classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, one encounters fantasy narratives exploring topics like the idea of parallel universes, alternative dimensions and others phenomena brought to our attention with developments in modern physics, the perils and hopes of AI, or the new conceptual perspectives on the human species which are the outcome recent developments in genetics and anthropology.

Consequently, the idea behind this Special Issue devoted to fantasy literature is to offer a meeting point for scholars researching the multifarious aspects relating to the field of fantasy fiction such as medievalism, secondary world construction, reformulations of such traditional narrative motifs as fairy obduction or the heroic quest, the question of human identity vs. the concept of the Other and artificial intelligence, issues relating to intertextuality and metatextuality, the subgenres of high fantasy, urban fantasy, Slavic fantasy, alternative history narratives,  the animal fable, or the comic, and mock heroic.

This also includes research projects that reach out towards other media than literature, exploring the appropriations of the fantasy mode in franchises such as Star Wars, Alien, or Westword, where it successfully interacts with the mode of science fiction.

Prof. Dr. Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.