The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays on the FictionEdited by Donald E. Morse and Kalman Matolcsy
Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III
Foreword by Brian Aldiss
Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-4942-2
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8521-5
notes, bibliography, index
202pp. softcover 2011
Price: $35.00
About the Book
Robert Holdstock was a prolific writer whose oeuvre included horror, fantasy, mystery and the novelization of films, often published under pseudonyms. These twelve critical essays explore Holdstock’s varied output by displaying his works against the backdrop of folk and fairy tales, dissecting their spatiotemporal order, and examining them as psychic fantasies of our unconscious life or as exempla of the sublime. The individual novels of the Mythago Wood sequence are explored, as is Holdstock’s early science fiction and the Merlin Codex series.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword: Under the Spell of a Magician
BRIAN W. ALDISS 1
Introduction: Mythago Wood—“A Source of Visions and Adventure”
DONALD E. MORSE 3
Part One: Approaches
1. The Embodiment of Abstraction in the Mythago Novels
W. A. SENIOR 13
2. Masks in the Forest: The Dynamics of Surface and Depth in the Mythago Cycle
KÁLMÁN MATOLCSY 26
3. Exploring the Habitats of Myths: The Spatiotemporal Structure of Ryhope Wood
STEFAN EKMAN 46
Part Two: The Novels
4. Time Winds: Early Science Fiction
ANDY SAWYER 67
5. Profusion Sublime and the Fantastic: Mythago Wood
MAREK OZIEWICZ 81
6. Tallis, the Feminine Presence in Mythago Wood: Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region
ELIZABETH A. WHITTINGHAM 96
7. Embedded Narratives in Lavondyss and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
VERA BENCZIK 114
8. Stories to Illuminate Truth and Lies to Hide Pain: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn
DONALD E. MORSE 129
9. “A Heap of Broken Images”—The Mythological Wasteland of the Mind: The Hollowing and Ancient Echoes
ILDIKÓ LIMPÁR 141
10. “So many names in so many tongues...”: Allusive Mythology in Celtika
C. W. SULLIVAN III 156
11. Thresholds, Polders, and Crosshatches in the Merlin Codex
TOM SHIPPEY 165
Robert Holdstock Bibliography 177
About the Contributors 183
Index 187
About the Author
Donald E. Morse is a professor at the University of Debrecen, in Hungary, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Oakland in Michigan. He is the author of a dozen books and over 100 scholarly articles. Kalman Matolcsy is a translator, poet, composer, and a professor at the University of Debrecen. He has written numerous scholarly articles on the literature of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Donald E. Palumbo is a professor of English at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He lives in Greenville. C.W. Sullivan III is a professor of arts and sciences at East Carolina University and a full member of the Welsh Academy. He is the author of numerous books and the on-line journal Celtic Cultural Studies.
