Certain stories act upon us. They shape the way that we see, encounter, and understand the world. A phenomenological approach to a narrative encounter with the world in terms of the mythic helps to illuminate a certain sensibility that mediates the world to human persons such that it is experienced as meaningful. Understanding the mythic in terms of a sensibility rather than in terms of a genre of literature or a form of cultural expression sheds light on how mythopoiesis is not a phenomenon restricted to archaic societies and the tales of either a bygone age or a culture or religion not our own. Among the most visible places of such mythopoiesis is so-called ‘mythopoieic literature’, fantasies that actively play with the sense of the possible, with narratives shaping the lives of characters, and what can be brought to the surface when meaning and being more closely and obviously co-inhere. A phenomenology of play, both in terms of the ludic fancy of the mythic and fantastic and the perception-shaping power of a game’s rules over the players, opens up the way that stories act upon our perception of the world and the meaning that we encounter.

Chapter Six considers the importance of the map for Fantasy with particular reference to J. R. R. Tolkien as the creator of that genre. Tolkien’s cartographic imagination in the process of creative composition is unique so that the chapter is largely devoted to a full exploration of this. The chapter works across Tolkien’s compositional process, tracing his need to map in order to write. The final section of the chapter draws attention to a post-authorial context for literary mapping, reflecting the larger cultural power and influence of Tolkien’s maps. (89)