Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Myhill, Nova

Area of Concentration

English, Political Science

Abstract

When examining the genre of Fantasy literature, one can draw a parallel between the political landscape of the author’s time and the conflicts within the fantasy novels that are produced by said author. Using the symbol of magic within these novels, one can understand how the authors of this genre from J.R.R. Tolkien to CS Lewis to Neil Gaiman and JK Rowling perceive the nature of power in a governmental sense. In these novels, these four authors from two very different time periods in the modern era, The World Wars and the end of the Cold War with the beginning of the War on Terror, these authors use the power of magic to identify who should wield this kind of power and for what reasons. Where Tolkien and Lewis use magic to uphold the idea of traditional power through established systems under the threat of total annihilation from an all consuming evil, mirroring the issues of the then crumbling British Empire against the weight of totalitarian usurpers in mainland Europe who launched wars of extinction that forced every man, woman and child to take up arms against an all consuming threat, Gaiman and Rowling use magic to reveal the corruption within the systems of government and advocate a more direct democratic approach to power in response to such corruption, mirroring the issues of the United States wielding unipolar power following the collapse of the Soviet Union and start the War on Terror following 9/11. By identifying the true nature of magic as it is conceived by each of these authors, one can trace the attitudes and political theories of the different periods of the modern era in response to understanding one question: who has the right to lead and why?

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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