I LOVE fantasy!! Perhaps it is because I grew up in the Harry Potter generation, perhaps it's because I secretly like to believe I'm really a long lost princess accidentally given to the wrong family. Either way, my shelves are filled with Christopher Paolini, Guy Gavriel Kay, to Tolkein and Johnathan Stroud. Yet I never really considered them study worthy literature until recently. Over the summer I took a class in Fantasy literature and had a blast, while examining many of the critical thinking perspectives I had also used in my other English classes. I crafted an essay I am particularly proud of that centered around the power of language in The Hobbit (Bilbo is a craftsman of languge, and there is nothing you can tell me to prove me otherwise!). I made me reconsider the cannon of literature one usually studies in school.
That's why I was so thrilled to read chapter 4 on speculative fiction in Reading Canada. Al the titles suggested in this section are ones I would have loved to read in high school, heck I already added several to my reading list. It is important that people realize that these novels are just as relevant to society and critical thinking practices as Shakespeare, and most importantly, they are more accessible for student engagement.
As the chapter suggests, speculative fiction has a greater capacity to explore the what if. All good fiction is about ordinary characters that do extraordinary things, but speculative fiction takes that one step further, and explores the ifs of our future and the mistakes of our past. Students see characters surmount impossible odds in perilous circumstances, which I think has the potential to empower students to think through their own problems and struggles. Like any other novel, speculative fiction is still open to post-colonial, feminist, and all other types of critiques. And if you can critique the absurdity of the fantastical, you can critique the absurdity of real life as well.
That's why I was so thrilled to read chapter 4 on speculative fiction in Reading Canada. Al the titles suggested in this section are ones I would have loved to read in high school, heck I already added several to my reading list. It is important that people realize that these novels are just as relevant to society and critical thinking practices as Shakespeare, and most importantly, they are more accessible for student engagement.
As the chapter suggests, speculative fiction has a greater capacity to explore the what if. All good fiction is about ordinary characters that do extraordinary things, but speculative fiction takes that one step further, and explores the ifs of our future and the mistakes of our past. Students see characters surmount impossible odds in perilous circumstances, which I think has the potential to empower students to think through their own problems and struggles. Like any other novel, speculative fiction is still open to post-colonial, feminist, and all other types of critiques. And if you can critique the absurdity of the fantastical, you can critique the absurdity of real life as well.