{"id":38597,"date":"2020-11-16T06:30:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T17:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=38597"},"modified":"2020-11-12T21:50:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T08:50:09","slug":"thinking-about-juxtapositions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2020\/11\/16\/thinking-about-juxtapositions\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About Juxtapositions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The series that wowed the world \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, I discussed the mystery<\/a> of what makes a literary work, such as Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine<\/em><\/strong>, or the Harry Potter<\/strong> series, resonate so powerfully with (by implication, many) readers that it becomes a bestseller.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, away back on November 1, I posted on the Supernatural Underground about the wealth of fantasy worlds<\/a> that have spun my reading wheels.<\/p>\n

When considering both posts together, I started thinking about the importance of juxtapositions when it comes to stories that have made an impact or cut a swathe through the world. For example, Harry Potter takes the traditional “boarding school story” and juxtaposes it with magic, setting a magical world directly alongside our everyday reality. The result is, well, magical<\/em>…<\/p>\n

\"\"Similarly, Joanne Harris’s Chocolat<\/em><\/strong> combines magic, this time manifested through the chocolate of the title, with the French village life of A Year In Provence<\/strong>. <\/em>Robin McKinley’s Sunshine <\/em><\/strong>managed a similar ‘marriage’ to good effect, only the baking and bakery-as-community hub were juxtaposed with vampires…<\/p>\n

As for Winter’s Tale<\/em> by Mark Helprin, as mentioned on Supernatural Underground, it’s “a variant of Gangs of New York meets Westside Story”<\/em>, with a dash of Narnia (i.e. the magical alongside the everyday, within a predominantly winter world) thrown in.<\/p>\n

\"\"Again as noted in the Supernatural Underground post<\/a>, the way in which the Alvin Maker<\/strong> series put together North American colonial history (albeit an alternate one) with folklore and eco-magic, also felt exciting and new when it first appeared, although “flintlock fantasy” has since become its own subgenre.<\/p>\n

I do not assert that juxtaposition alone (i.e. of older storytelling traditions and genres into a new format) unravels the mystery discussed last week, but it does appear to be a relatively consistent element when storytelling is hailed as “new” and ‘fresh.” The effect is not unlike the confluence of two rivers, which by coming together create a strong and energetic current going forward. Other storytelling elements, such as a great plot and vibrant characters, definitely need to be present for a story to be successful, but a little genre-bending may sometimes help move things along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I discussed the mystery of what makes a literary work, such as Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, or the Harry Potter series, resonate so powerfully with (by implication, many) readers that it becomes a bestseller. Meanwhile, away back on November 1, I posted on the Supernatural Underground about the wealth of fantasy worlds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38597"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38645,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38597\/revisions\/38645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}