The argument in the book is aimed at illustrating how the fantasy fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin is influenced by the legacy of medieval heroic literature, and also how the secondary worlds created by the respective authors enter into dialogue with the medieval ideas concerning artistic creativity and the psychological and cognitive habits which constitute an inherent element of the imagery of medieval heroic literature and of the medieval civilisation in general.
The paper seeks to explore the concept of the secondary world as developed in Susanna Clarke’s 2020 fantasy novel Piranesi. The analysis is conducted in the context of the evolution of the literary motif of fairy abduction between the classic medieval texts and its current incarnations in modern speculative fiction. The argument relates the unique secondary world model found in Clarke’s novel to the extensive intertextual relationship Piranesi has with the tradition of portal fantasy narratives, and discusses it in the context of the progressive cognitive internalisation of the perception of the fantastic which has taken place between the traditional medieval paradigm and contemporary fantasy fiction.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.