The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature

Those of you with any kind of scholarly interest in the literatures of the fantastic should grab this book as soon as possible. It's out next month, and as you can see from the TOC below, it's got a terrific lineup of essays. I can't wait to get my copies. My own contribution is on urban fantasy. Among other things, it's a quiet attempt to reclaim that term from its unfortunate diffusion to include every book with a tough woman in leather pants on the cover, but it's also an exploration of the relationship between ideas of the urban and ideas of the fantastic.

Here's the full listing on the Cambridge University Press web site. If you're an academic, encourage your library to order this book. Or get one yourself! This is the Amazon link, but of course you should buy local if you can.


Introduction
Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
Part I. Histories:
1. Fantasy from Dryden to Dunsany Gary K. Wolfe
2. Gothic and horror fiction Adam Roberts
3. American fantasy, 1820–1950 Paul Kincaid
4. The development of children's fantasy Maria Nikolajeva
5. Tolkien, Lewis, and the explosion of genre fantasy Edward James
Part II. Ways of Reading:
6. Structuralism Brian Attebery
7. Psychoanalysis Andrew M. Butler
8. Political readings Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint
9. Modernism and postmodernism Jim Casey
10. Thematic criticism Farah Mendlesohn
11. The languages of the fantastic Greer Gilman
12. Reading the fantasy series Kari Maund
13. Reading the slipstream Gregory Frost
Part III. Clusters:
14. Magical realism Sharon Sieber
15. Writers of colour Nnedi Okorafor
16. Quest fantasies W. A. Senior
17. Urban fantasy Alexander C. Irvine
18. Dark fantasy and paranormal romance Roz Kaveney
19. Modern children's fantasy Charlie Butler
20. Historical fantasy Veronica Schanoes
21. Fantasies of history and religion Graham Sleight