The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock

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.

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.

Kálmán 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.

Edited by Donald E. Morse and Kálmán Matolcsy

Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 202
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4942-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8521-5
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy

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

“As a first step towards providing a serious critical study of the work of Robert Holdstock, we have to welcome this book”—SF Site.