Phantasmagoria: Collected Essays on the Nature of Fantasy and Horror Literature - Softcover

This fascinating collection is the product of over fifty years of a love affair with the literature of the fantastic as a vocation and avocation. Many of the essays are reprinted here from distinguished journals. They range over fascinating authors and topics and are accessible and enlightening for both the scholar and the fan. The author’s voracious reading captures definitions of both horror and fantasy and probes the vital importance of the secondary character in fantasy, horror, and literature in general. Topics range among the definitions of fantasy and horror as well as the nature of evil. There are important discussions of feminism, setting, the fool, the artisan, the shaman, the double, specific authors, the sidekick, and others. The authors included span the entire alphabet from Poul Anderson, Robert E. Howard and Ray Bradbury to Andre Norton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Roger Zelazny. They include the wildly popular, like Stephen King, to the obscure, like Sara Coleridge and Eden Phillpotts. Further, this collection includes suggestions and building blocks for the future and encourage further enlightening journeys.

Roger C. Schlobin is a Retired Visiting Assistant Professor of English from East Carolina University and Professor Emeritus of Purdue University. He holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature and Languages from Ohio State University. He has authored six scholarly books and edited over fifty. His various other publications include over one-hundred essays, various poems, short stories, reviews, and bibliographies that range over such varied topics as fantasy literature, pedagogy, science fiction, medieval and Arthurian literature, feminism, shamanism, linguistics, and microcomputer hardware and software. He is one of the founders of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and its conference and of the “Year’s Scholarship in Science Fiction and Fantasy.” He is a past editor of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is the author of the first original, electronic novel to be published over the Internet: Fire and Fur: The Last Sorcerer Dragon, which is available from Amazon for the Kindle and in paperback. When not writing or teaching, he enjoys his family; tinkers with “Baby” (his souped-up 1977 Datsun 280Z); is former president and founder of the Emerald City Z Club; chases great food and drink; takes occasional photographs; collects dragons and t-shirts; plays computer games; and still mourns the passing of his silver-mackerel tabby, the great Joshua Thunderpussy.