Abstract, Chapter in Tales after Tolkien: Medievalism in Fantasy and Science Fiction: Considering Divergent Medievalisms in Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies

I was fortunate enough to be able to get a chapter accepted to a publication edited by Helen Young of the Tales after Tolkien Society. The abstract below is what got me accepted.

Although Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man trilogy deploys a number of the “standard” features of the common modern fantasy literature setting (what may loosely be termed the Tolkienan tradition), it displays deviations from those features in several regards. Notable among them is the depiction of cultures deriving from other parts of the medieval than the most commonly evoked Continent of the Crusades, particularly that of the Out Isles. The society Hobb depicts therein initially appears, and can be argued, to appropriate the Nordic cultures frequently represented in Tolkienan-tradition fantasy literature (notably in the Rohirrim in Tolkien’s Middle-earth and the Greyjoys in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire). Upon closer examination, however, the Out Islands echo more clearly the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada.

The detailed depiction of features of cultures from outside those employed by the Tolkienan tradition merits study not only in itself and in its offering a more nuanced and therefore more authentic vision of the medieval than many of Hobb’s contemporaries, but in terms of what it indicates about the readership of mainstream English-language fantasy literature. That the mention of a raiding island culture in a fantasy series immediately brings to mind traditional depictions of Vikings—and even prompts formal argument in favor of that impression—bespeaks a decidedly Northern- and Western-European-centric bias, one likely to be present also among other academic readers and the more general fantasy readership. Recognizing and negotiating that bias allows for a broader conception of what fantasy literature can do—and, as fantasy literature is often the avenue through which readers begin to investigate the medieval, it allows for a broader conception of what the medieval can be, helping to promote a cross-cultural understanding increasingly valuable in an increasingly interconnected and pop-culture-saturated world.

The proposed chapter follows up on a line of inquiry initially advanced during the Tales after Tolkien sessions at the 48^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.