Dissertation

Writing Urban

Writing urban is a journal about writing in the genre, Urban Fantasy. There will be more to come, book reviews, journal articles amongst other things. Stop by occasionally and check out writing urban.

The exegetical component of the dissertation is a limited study on urban fantasy and its use of the absent or dead mother trope

Abstract: The Book of Matthew is an Urban Fantasy story that subverts, to a point, the absent or dead mother trope popular in the genre. The protagonist, an immortal being longing for death, is forced to live through the same events over hundreds of lifetimes.

The protagonists view of the world is framed through the bay windows of his lounge room, until he is lured from the comfort of his house by a small boy’s grief. In the accompanying exegesis I explore the absent or dead mother trope through a content analysis of a representative sample of texts from the Urban Fantasy genre, so as to respond to the research question: How prevalent is the absent or dead mother trope in the Urban Fantasy genre?

I explore how the absent or dead mother trope has been viewed historically and apply this in an effort to explain the prevalence of the trope in the Urban Fantasy genre. In addition I briefly discuss the influence the research had on the artefact creation process.