MYTH AND FABULATION

IN THE FANTASY FICTION

OF NEIL GAIMAN

Academic essay (critical analysis of novels, short stories, comics and films written by Neil Gaiman mainly, but also of works by  Alan Moore, Shakespeare, Borges, Lovecraft, Philip José Farmer, Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, Roger Avary  and many others). The original was released in October 2018 and adapted from my doctoral dissertation. This self-translation into English was published in August 2026.

Back cover:

Available in English for the first time, this wide-ranging critical study examines Neil Gaiman’s fiction through the lenses of intertextuality, metafiction, and cultural context. Informed by comics, novels, short stories, and film, Camus situates Gaiman’s oeuvre within a literary network that includes Alan Moore, Shakespeare, Borges, Philip José Farmer, Jack Kirby, and Winsor McCay. The study explores how myth operates across Gaiman’s fiction as both an inherited narrative and an evolving cultural practice, shaping the meaning and structure of his works.

Through both theoretical perspective and close analysis of sources, the book posits fabulation as a form of mythmaking, through which Gaiman’s works both expose and participate in the mechanisms of fantasy. Central to the argument is the stance that Gaiman’s fiction stages itself as a pseudo-myth, using self-reflection to reveal how fantasy partakes in both the construction and renewal of authority, tradition, and belief. The updated English translation is augmented with additional commentary and a new preface that traces the book’s research as well as recent accusations against Gaiman, situating the study within more contemporary contexts.


The book's page on the publisher's website:

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/myth-and-fabulation-in-the-fantasy-fiction-of-neil-gaiman/

MYTHE ET FABULATION DANS LA FICTION FANTASTIQUE ET MERVEILLEUSE DE NEIL GAIMAN
Academic essay (critical analysis of novels, short stories, comics and films written by Neil Gaiman mainly, but also of works by  Alan Moore, Shakespeare, Borges, Lovecraft, Philip José Farmer, Jack Kirby, Winsor McCay, Roger Avary, and many others). Released in October 2018 and adapted from my doctoral thesis.

Back cover: Neil Gaiman’s fantasy works are often deemed postmodernist since they experiment with self-reflexivity and mix it with a supposedly antagonistic impulse towards popular fiction. Typical postmodernist works mostly emphasize their attacks against the fictional illusions of referentiality, character or plot. On the contrary, Gaiman’s works unapologetically remain within the bounds of fantasy, a genre in which imagination and storytelling are paramount–along with their related issues: characterization, plot, emotion and suspense. Thus, Gaiman’s fiction is not experimental fiction enhanced with elements of popular fiction, but actual popular fiction made self-reflexive. Thanks to that peculiar mood, studying Gaiman’s work is a very fruitful means of investigating the distinctive features of popular fiction, and its inherent emphasis on storytelling–or, as Henri Bergson called it, “fabulation.” Both Bergson and Frank McConnell focused on this notion which they saw as the essential link between ancient mythmaking and today’s fiction writing. Gaiman’s fiction mostly relies on such a dialectics between myth, popular fiction and storytelling or fabulation. His fantasy stories constantly rewrite ancient, religious myths, modern myths or the “myths” of popular fiction, and feature many fictional and historical writers, traditional storytellers, or Gaiman’s own personae, so that in paratext as well as in the heart of a narrative, in the quiet and supposedly reliable words of an introduction as surely as on the most striking comics panels, fiction is portrayed as myth, writers as mythical avatars of some archetypal storyteller, and storytelling as the one, quintessential human act.

Page of the book on the publisher's website:
 CALIBAN N°52

CALIBAN AND HIS TRANSMUTATIONS
Caliban et ses avatars
This collective collection of article was published in 2014 as the fiftieth anniversary issue of the journal Caliban. It was edited by Françoise Besson, Philippe Birgy, Roland Bouyssou, Jean-Louis Breteau, Jean-Paul Débax, Albert Poyet and Marcienne Rocard, and it is about the thousand reinventions of the character Caliban, and of Shakespeare's play The Tempest in general, in world culture. It contains my article: "Calibans for the 1990s and 2000s: Shakespeare and Fantasy in the Age of 'Professional Fan Fiction' and Integrative Fiction".

The article studies the rewrites of Caliban and The Tempest in various parodic works or various crossover works of literature and comics belonging to the genres of fantasy, fantasy and/or science fiction, and published in the 1990s and 2000s (specifically: Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics series, Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics series, Nigel A. Sellars's short story "The Confessions of Caliban", and the novels Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams and Iliad and Olympos by Dan Simmons).

Page of the book on the publisher's site:

My article (as well as the whole issue) can also be read online: