Here Be Dragons

"Fantastic and surreal landscapes are one of the unique charms of the fantasy genre. Yet, scholarship on fantasy has tended to focus on character and lot over setting. In Here Be Dragons, Stefan Ekman aims to fill this lacuna of fantasy scholarship by providing a critical vocabulary that explores the unique role maps and settings play ... Here Be Dragons is a valuable contribution to fantasy studies."—Jason M. Calabrese Baidenmann, SFRA Review

"This volume will be a welcome addition to libraries and personal collections, and the framework of topical study would make an excellent teaching tool and exemplar for students. This book is recommended not only for Ekman's clear and precise writing style, but also for the polishing interweaving of primary and secondary sources so that each illuminates the other purposefully Ekman's study has added much to the array of tools at critics' disposal in the discussion of fantasy texts."—Caitlin Herington, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

"Fantastic and surreal landscapes are one of the unique charms of the fantasy genre. Yet, scholarship on fantasy has tended to focus on character and lot over setting. In Here Be Dragons, Stefan Ekman aims to fill this lacuna of fantasy scholarship by providing a critical vocabulary that explores the unique role maps and settings play Here Be Dragons is a valuable contribution to fantasy studies."—Jason M. Calabrese Baidenmann, SFRA Review

"Here Be Dragons provide[s] a starting point for future scholarship on the topic. It will be a useful grounding reference for scholars who intend to explore these themes in greater analytical depth."—Stentor Danielson, Historical Geography

"This excellent and innovative work draws on theoretical ideas from inside and outside of fantasy scholarship, and combines an impressively broad survey of texts with thoughtful reading of key examples. Ekman convincingly shows how much of fantasy's significance comes from its representation of settings."—Brian Attebery

"What do maps and mapping have to tell us about the construction of fantasy worlds? What is the role of landscape in the creation of the myth-scape of fantasy? Here Be Dragons considers the role of boundaries and 'polders' in constructing the dynamics of fantasy and asks how the mythological relations of humans to their world are shaped.""—Farah Mendlesohn, author of Rhetorics of Fantasy