Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-j4qg9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-09T18:22:48.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 11 - Morris’s Prose Romances and the Origins of Fantasy

from Part II - Authorship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2024

Marcus Waithe
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

This chapter examines the series of prose romances that William Morris wrote in the 1850s, 1880s and 1890s and that were rediscovered in the twentieth century by writers, editors and critics of fantasy. The first section, ‘Romance and Fantasy’, recovers the moment of Morris’s canonisation as the ‘inventor’ of imaginary-world fantasy and briefly considers his influence on J. R. R. Tolkien, before tracing fantasy’s roots back to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century definitions of the romance genre. The second and third sections, ‘The Romances of the 1890s and the Germanic Romances’ and ‘The Political Romances and the Romances of the 1850s’, provide an overview of the key formal and thematic characteristics of Morris’s texts, proceeding in reverse order from his final medievalist fantasies, via his socialist timeslip dream visions to the short-form romances of his student days. These sections highlight the variable significance of communalism at different stages of Morris’s writing career and introduce comparisons with contemporary works by Mark Twain and Edward Bellamy. The final section of the chapter offers a case study of The Story of the Glittering Plain (1890), focusing on the themes of mortality and kinship.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×