Literary Worlds
This term describes the imagined environments, societies, cultures and realities constructed within a text.
What are literary worlds?
This poem follows a sailor whose supernatural experience begins after he kills an albatross.
What is 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'?
This fictional traveller visits four extraordinary lands, including Lilliput and Brobdingnag.
Who is Lemuel Gulliver?
This young protagonist enters a fantastical underground world while living in post-Civil War Spain.
Who is Ofelia?
Gulliver's Travels, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Pan's Labyrinth all construct unusual worlds through perspectives that encourage audiences to question what they initially accept as reality.
What is the use of perspective to destabilise assumptions about reality?
When a composer takes an existing text, genre, myth, character or world and transforms it for a new context, this process is called this.
What is reimagining?
In 'Kubla Khan', Coleridge creates an exotic and fantastical landscape.
What is Xanadu?
In this land, Gulliver encounters people who are tiny compared with him, allowing Swift to satirise European politics and society.
What is Lilliput?
Ofelia's fantasy world is accessed through this mysterious structure, which becomes a symbol of transformation and escape.
What is the labyrinth?
Swift's satirical worlds, Coleridge's supernatural worlds and del Toro's fantasy world are all shaped by the cultural and historical concerns of their composers.
What is the relationship between context and the construction of literary worlds?
This element of context can explain how changing beliefs, values and social conditions influence the way a literary world is constructed.
What is historical/cultural context?
This supernatural figure in 'Christabel' disrupts the boundaries between human and otherworldly, creating ambiguity about reality.
Who is Geraldine?
This floating island is inhabited by intellectuals so absorbed in abstract mathematics and scientific speculation that they become disconnected from practical life.
What is Laputa?
This terrifying creature represents the abuse of power and the dangers of obedience within Ofelia's fantasy world.
Who is the Pale Man?
This conceptual opposition is central to Coleridge's supernatural poetry and del Toro's film, while Swift uses impossible worlds to expose uncomfortable truths about the real world.
What is reality versus imagination?
When a text transforms an earlier text through allusion, adaptation, parody or revision, it participates in this relationship between texts.
What is textual conversation?
Coleridge's poetry frequently explores this Romantic concept which transforms ordinary experience into something supernatural or sublime.
What is the power of the imagination?
Swift uses this literary technique by presenting Gulliver's observations as reasonable while exposing the absurdity of the societies he encounters.
What is satire?
Del Toro juxtaposes the fantasy world with this historical context, shaping the film's exploration of violence, authoritarianism and resistance.
What is Francoist Spain?
Gulliver becomes an outsider in Brobdingnag, the Ancient Mariner becomes isolated following his transgression, and Ofelia is alienated from the oppressive adult world around her.
What is the other?
In Reimagined Worlds, students examine how composers construct worlds to challenge, reinforce or transform these underlying assumptions about people, society and reality.
What are values and beliefs?
Coleridge's manipulation of supernatural worlds can be understood as a response to the rationalism of this broader intellectual and cultural movement.
What is the Enlightenment?
The increasingly disturbing journeys of Gulliver ultimately challenge this Enlightenment assumption about humanity's rationality and superiority.
What is the belief in human reason and progress?
The film deliberately refuses to provide a definitive distinction between fantasy and reality, creating this kind of interpretive uncertainty.
What is ambiguity?
Gulliver’s changing view of humanity, the Ancient Mariner’s spiritual awakening, and Ofelia’s journey all illustrate this common narrative pattern.
What is personal transformation?