If reading about a place we have never been activates our imagination, doing it about a fantastic and non-existent one could say that it makes us fly. It is what will have happened to you when you have mentally traveled to these imaginary places that serve as the setting for famous literary works.
Fortresses, steep mountains, colorful landscapes, heroes and villains, goblins, talking animals… Do we practice fantasy tourism through books?
A journey through the invented worlds of literature
Camelot
It is the name of the castle and kingdom of the mythical King Arthur. Surrounded by impenetrable forests, on the banks of a river and next to Saint Stephen's Cathedral, Camelot was first mentioned in the poem Lancelot (Chrétien de Troyes, 12th century) Despite the various legends in which it appears, it has not yet it is known where it may originate. It is true that there are several English fortresses that have been said to have housed Camelot, such as Cadbury, Tintagel, Dinerth or Windsor.Excalibur hotel in las vegas was inspired by king Arthur's Camelot castle
Utopia
This idyllic island lost in the middle of the ocean appears in the work of the same name (1516) by Thomas More. Utopia is the example of the perfect State, but very difficult to carry out, in which peace reigns, where its inhabitants enjoy physical and moral well-being, and in which private property does not exist. The island, created by its inhabitants, is a crescent-shaped belt of land, with a bay in the center. The cities, all of the same size, have rationally designed houses and farms, taking into account aspects such as lighting or ventilation...
Lilliput
Jonathan Swift devised this kingdom inhabited by dwarves for his satirical novel Gulliver's Travels (1726). On this fictional island that the writer located in Australia, Dr. Lemuel Gulliver was shipwrecked. An island separated by a channel from its neighbor Blefuscu, with which he is permanently at war, due to an absurd dispute about how to crack boiled eggs. All the flora and fauna of both islands have a proportional size twelve times smaller than that of our world. Built on a perfect square, Lilliput's capital is Mildendo and is connected to the rest of the island by excellent roads. It has been generally accepted that Lilliput represents England , and Blefuscu France .gulliver's travels
Wonderland
The world Alice dreams of in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll. It is a magical place found underground to which Alice travels after falling down a rabbit hole. Wonderland, which has a beautiful garden, a forest and an ocean, is inhabited by animals ( Cheshire Cat , White Rabbit , Dodo , March Hare …) and characters (Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts , card soldiers...) with whom Alicia maintains contact through the stories that happen to her in her dream.
Zenda
Kingdom invented by Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins in his work The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). The young Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll will have to free his distant cousin, the king of Zenda, from his kidnapping. As Rudolf battles his enemies, he falls in love with the sovereign's fiancée, Princess Flavia. Finally, Rudolf achieves the mission of saving his cousin but returns to England without the princess, since he feels she does not belong to him. Hope's novel gives the impression that this fantasy kingdom would not be a pleasant place to live due to its irresponsible and autocratic king, constant police surveillance, and a highly polarized social structure between rich and poor.
Oz
It is a fantasy world invented by Lyman Frank Baum for his children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). It tells the adventures of Dorothy Gale in the land of Oz, where she arrives from the gray Kansas driven by a cyclone with her dog. In a colorful fairy tale setting illustrated by WW Denslow, Dorothy, eager to return home and chased by a witch, encounters the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion, characters who symbolize those values they believe they lack: common sense, tenderness, courage and loyalty. Together, and following the yellow brick road, they look for the Wizard in the green Emerald City, capital of Oz, since they are convinced that he will solve their worries and make their wishes come true. oz a world of fantasy
Neverland
Created by James Matthew Barrie for the play Peter Pan and Wendy (1904) It is an imaginary island to which Wendy and her brothers will travel to take care of the lost children who live there. There, where time does not advance and no one grows, they will live various adventures led by the hero Peter Pan and accompanied by other characters such as the sirens or the fairy Tinkerbell. However, in Neverland they will encounter the villainous Captain Hook and wild Indians. If someone wishes to reach this island, they must turn the second star to the right, flying until dawn.
Middle Earth
This is what JRR Tolkien called the habitable places of his legendarium , a series of mythological works created from 1936 with the intention of inventing an ancient history of Europe. Tolkien commented that the geography of Middle-earth was intended as that of Earth. In fact, there are those who think that due to its location on the map and other climatic, botanical and zoological aspects, the Hobbits ' Shire could remain in England; Gondor for Italy and Greece; Mordor in the arid regions of Turkey and the Middle East; South Gondor and Near Harad in the North African deserts ; Rhovanion in the forests of Germany and the steppes of Russia; and the Forochel Ice Bay in the fjords of Norway . The author populated Middle-earth with men , elves, dwarves , hobbits , ents , orcs … In addition, he devised languages for them such as Westron , Quenya , Sindarin , Khuzdul or Black .
Narnia
Narnia is a world of fantasy and magic created by CS Lewis for his seven Chronicles of Narnia fantasy books (1950–1956) and illustrated, in its original version, by Pauline Baynes . The protagonist of the heptalogy is the lion Aslan, creator of Narnia, in whose territories humans, animals and mythological creatures live . Some belong to good and others to evil. Narnia features underground cities and landforms like those on our planet: deserts, mountain ranges, the Great River, and ocean islands.
Macondo
Macondo is a fictional town described by Gabriel García Márquez in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), among many others. Six generations of the Buendía family lived in Macondo during that century. The author himself commented that "the description of Macondo corresponds to that of a Caribbean town, typical of Colombia, with dusty streets and a certain precariousness that grew thanks to Buendía's vision" In the novel we can read that "from every house he could get to the river and get water […] It was truly a happy village, where no one was over thirty years old and where no one had died.”
Fancy
It is a fantastic world invented by Michael Ende in his work The Neverending Story (1979). The protagonist is a young warrior named Atreyu, whom the Childish Empress asks to start a search to find a cure for the disease he suffers from. The real world also appears in the novel, in which Bastián lives, the child protagonist who reads “The Neverending Story”. The inhabitants and places of Fantasia disappear as the empress's health worsens, so the presence of Nothingness is gaining ground in the kingdom. In Atreyu's struggle to save Infantile and Fantasia, characters like the white dragon Fújur appear.
King's Landing
King's Landing first appears in the fantasy novel Game of Thrones (1996) by George R. R. Martin , which is part of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. King's Landing is the capital and main port of the Seven Kingdoms , a nation belonging to the continent of Westeros. Settled on three hills, the city has a rectangular shape and is distributed in wide avenues and dirty alleys. King's Landing is surrounded by a wall with seven gates. Inside, it houses the Red Fortress, which is the king's house, mansions, taverns, brothels, cemeteries, markets, stalls and, above all, numerous wooden and straw houses that house the large number of people who live there. The story of A Song of Ice and Fire is set in a fictional medieval world in which most of the characters are human . In the book series there are three main stories about Westeros that are dependent on each other: the war between various noble families for control of the continent; the threat of the Others and the wildlings; and the journey of Daenerys Targaryen , the exiled daughter of a murdered king, who claims her rights in Westeros.
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