Joy Beyond the World, Poignant as Grief: Fantasy as a Literature of Continuance

Author

• Natasha Ochshorn, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

English

Advisor

Carrie Hintz

Committee Members

Steven Kruger

Ashley Dawson

Subject Categories

Children's and Young Adult Literature | Literature in English, British Isles | Literature in English, North America

Keywords

American literature, British literature, Genre literature, Literature, Genre fiction, Fantasy literature, Science fiction and fantasy

Abstract

This dissertation argues that fantasy literature is built on a relationship between three elements—desire, impossibility, and grief—that creates a mode that I am calling a literature of continuance: an imaginative exercise not in futurity—which imagines what might or will be—but in change unbound. Another way to say this might be that fantasy is a mode of possibility, but as it is also decidedly dependent on impossibility. It is this continuing, this productive tension between loss and possibility, that creates the state usually understood as enchantment. From the standpoint of criticism, reading a fantasy text correctly requires identifying the source of enchantment: the desire and the grief that fuels the text as it is specifically expressed in the impossible—the fantastic element or what could be called magic. This means not only looking at how the fantastic works structurally, but also at the affect produced by the fantastic in its environment. Reading fantasy in this way allows for an analysis of otherworld beyond allegory or one-to-one political analysis, and offers a richer and more meaningful dialogue with these texts.

The first chapter looks at contemporary American adaptations of King Arthur stories and their relationship with desire and history. This includes The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Green Knight written and directed by David Lowery, The Bright Sword byLev Grossman, and the novel series The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. The second chapter returns to Tolkien with a reading of The Lord of the Rings. In this chapter I think through the continued appeal of this strange, disjointed, oddly formal novel and how understanding its endurance as a text can help illuminate the possibilities of fantasy as a genre that works to synthesize environmental grief and desire through enchantment into a productive affect of continuance that can help us understand how to cope. The third chapter uses John Crowley’s novel Little, Big to focus on the concept of the “portal” in fantasy; the point of transition from which a character moves from our world into another: a metatextual endeavor in which art making and craft are represented as essential for possibility, and enchantment, even though all attempts at total, stable connection will be ultimately futile. The final chapter is, “Hauntopography: American Ghosts and other Detritus,” which focuses on Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods along with the computer game Kentucky Route Zero created by the design firm Cardboard Computer. I use these two texts to develop a concept of Hauntopography, which I define as the ways in which the past embeds itself into landscapes and geographies.

Recommended Citation

Ochshorn, Natasha, "Joy Beyond the World, Poignant as Grief: Fantasy as a Literature of Continuance" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6739