Threats or Victims: The Ambiguous Nature of Supernatural Creatures in Andrzej Sapkowski’s and George R. R. Martin’s Fantasy

• Authors: Piven, Sviatoslav

Abstracts

EN

Many postcolonial readings of fantasy fiction focus on exploring complicated relationships between different fantastic races that inhabit a certain secondary world. However, such studies often overlook interactions of these races with the supernatural animals and beasts that live alongside them. Fantasy narratives like Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher Saga and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire depict fantastic settings where the relationship between the inhabitants of the world and the supernatural creatures is just as important as the interracial relations because it is based on similar principles of interaction between the Familiar and the Other and can be used to characterize them. Therefore, this article will address the following issues: how the supernatural creatures are perceived in their respective secondary worlds; what attitude prevails in this perception; and why it prevails above other reactions.

Keywords

EN

supernatural creatures; the Other; fantasy; George R. R. Martin; Andrzej Sapkowski

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Analyses/Rereadings/Theories: A Journal Devoted to Literature, Film and Theatre
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Piven, Sviatoslav

other

National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”

other

Sviatoslav Piven is a doctoral student at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine. His professional interests include comparative and narrative studies of science fiction and fantasy in various media (literature, film, and video games). He is currently working on a Ph.D. thesis (supervised by Prof. Volodymyr Morenets) on construction of the world-pictures in Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher Saga and George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

Identifiers

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/11089/21965