Unseen Sights : Magic, Modernity, and Childhood in Children's Urban Fantasy
(2026)- Abstract
- Unseen Sights: Magic, Modernity, and Childhood in Children’s Urban Fantasy explores and analyses the genre of children’s urban fantasy. Drawing upon a combination of fantasy, urban fantasy, and children’s literature scholarship, the thesis considers how children’s urban fantasy works – investigating both its forms and functions, and how it performs work in the world.
The genre is analysed both synchronically and diachronically, with chapter one and two establishing a theoretical and historical understanding of its core features, and anchoring the emergence and development of those features in a historical and cultural context. The following chapters consider prominent themes and narrative structures: chapter three discusses the... (More) - Unseen Sights: Magic, Modernity, and Childhood in Children’s Urban Fantasy explores and analyses the genre of children’s urban fantasy. Drawing upon a combination of fantasy, urban fantasy, and children’s literature scholarship, the thesis considers how children’s urban fantasy works – investigating both its forms and functions, and how it performs work in the world.
The genre is analysed both synchronically and diachronically, with chapter one and two establishing a theoretical and historical understanding of its core features, and anchoring the emergence and development of those features in a historical and cultural context. The following chapters consider prominent themes and narrative structures: chapter three discusses the artistic protagonist and the uses of art and other creative expressions; chapter four analyses the child investigator and the investigation plot; chapter five considers the genre’s preoccupation with history through the construction of the child as an urban archaeologist; chapter six challenges the common notion that urban fantasy must be set in a city, and explores the weaponisation of nostalgic narratives in provincial places such as idyllic small towns and mono-industrial towns.
The thesis finds that the genre of children’s urban fantasy explores the meeting between the child, the fantastic, and modernity. This meeting is structured around the child seeing the unseen, an act that holds political, ethical and didactic implications. Structurally, children’s urban fantasy combines features from different genres, mixing traditions, myths and settings in order to renegotiate the relationship between enchantment and disenchantment. Accordingly, children’s urban fantasy expresses a political and didactic impulse, saying something about the contemporary, modern
society and inviting the child reader to see their world differently. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/9f47bc89-933a-4df8-82e5-d019b2a0550d
- author
- Landegren, Amanda LU
- supervisor
- opponent
-
- associate professor Joe Sutliff Sanders, University of Cambridge
- organization
- publishing date
- 2026-02-20
- type
- Thesis
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- urban fantasy, Fantasy, Children's literature, Young Adult Literature, modernity, childhood, speculative fiction, Disenchantment
- pages
- 254 pages
- defense location
- SOL:s hörsal
- defense date
- 2026-03-21 10:15:00
- ISBN
- 978-91-90055-68-7
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 9f47bc89-933a-4df8-82e5-d019b2a0550d
- date added to LUP
- 2026-02-19 12:57:01
- date last changed
- 2026-02-20 10:45:17
@phdthesis{9f47bc89-933a-4df8-82e5-d019b2a0550d,
abstract = {{Unseen Sights: Magic, Modernity, and Childhood in Children’s Urban Fantasy explores and analyses the genre of children’s urban fantasy. Drawing upon a combination of fantasy, urban fantasy, and children’s literature scholarship, the thesis considers how children’s urban fantasy works – investigating both its forms and functions, and how it performs work in the world.<br/><br/>The genre is analysed both synchronically and diachronically, with chapter one and two establishing a theoretical and historical understanding of its core features, and anchoring the emergence and development of those features in a historical and cultural context. The following chapters consider prominent themes and narrative structures: chapter three discusses the artistic protagonist and the uses of art and other creative expressions; chapter four analyses the child investigator and the investigation plot; chapter five considers the genre’s preoccupation with history through the construction of the child as an urban archaeologist; chapter six challenges the common notion that urban fantasy must be set in a city, and explores the weaponisation of nostalgic narratives in provincial places such as idyllic small towns and mono-industrial towns.<br/><br/>The thesis finds that the genre of children’s urban fantasy explores the meeting between the child, the fantastic, and modernity. This meeting is structured around the child seeing the unseen, an act that holds political, ethical and didactic implications. Structurally, children’s urban fantasy combines features from different genres, mixing traditions, myths and settings in order to renegotiate the relationship between enchantment and disenchantment. Accordingly, children’s urban fantasy expresses a political and didactic impulse, saying something about the contemporary, modern<br/>society and inviting the child reader to see their world differently.}},
author = {{Landegren, Amanda}},
isbn = {{978-91-90055-68-7}},
keywords = {{urban fantasy; Fantasy; Children's literature; Young Adult Literature; modernity; childhood; speculative fiction; Disenchantment}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{02}},
school = {{Lund University}},
title = {{Unseen Sights : Magic, Modernity, and Childhood in Children's Urban Fantasy}},
year = {{2026}},
}