The Voiceless Find their Voice: Resistance and Opposition in the Fantasy of Johan Heliot and Pierre Pevel

Abstract

Resistance to dominant forms and opposition to the forces of power are two traits that are characteristic of our contemporary era; however, one might not expect such themes to play a role in works of the fantasy genre, which are often associated with—if not accused of—being escapist and distant from reality. Nonetheless, certain twenty-first-century French fantasy works, including Johan Heliot’s Faerie Stories series and Pierre Pevel’s Le Paris des merveilles series, engage with these very themes, linking them not only to questions of our time, but also illustrating the pertinence of the fantasy genre to current issues. This article uses the specific cases of these two series of novels to examine how the themes of resistance and opposition are deployed in fantasy universes before going on to argue how these same themes can be viewed on a “meta” level to grapple with the limits and criticisms of the fantasy genre itself, by demonstrating a form of resistance or opposition to the past and to conservative ideologies.

Keywords:

• Fantasy
• genre
• Johan Heliot
• opposition
• Pierre Pevel
• resistance

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabeth Herbst Buzay

Elisabeth Herbst Buzay has worked at Smith College, the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and the University of Connecticut since receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 2018. Her current research focuses on objects and communication in medieval French romance and contemporary French fantasy novels. She has published in the Revue de Philologie et de Communication interculturelle, Nouvelles Francographies, and L’Esplumeoir, and co-authored a book chapter with Emmanuel Buzay entitled “Neomedievalism and the Epic in Assassin’s Creed: The Hero’s Quest.”