Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and in some cases is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic
Tzvetan TodorovTzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....
in his work
The Fantastic. He describes the fantastic as being a liminal state of the supernatural.
A truly fantastic work is subtle and leaves the reader with a sense of confusion about the work about whether or not the phenomenon was real.
Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and in some cases is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic
Tzvetan TodorovTzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....
in his work
The Fantastic. He describes the fantastic as being a liminal state of the supernatural.
A truly fantastic work is subtle and leaves the reader with a sense of confusion about the work about whether or not the phenomenon was real. Todorov compares this with two other ideas: The Uncanny, wherein the phenomenon turns out to have a rational explanation such as in the
GothicGothic fiction is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an...
works of
Ann RadcliffeAnn Radcliffe was an English author, a pioneer of the gothic novel. It was her technique of the explained supernatural, in which every seemingly supernatural intrusion is eventually traced back to natural causes, and the impeccable conduct of her heroines that finally met with the approval of the...
; or the Marvellous, where there truly is a supernatural explanation for the phenomenon:
The fantastic requires the fulfilment of three conditions. First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural or supernatural explanation of the events described. Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader's role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work -- in the case of naive reading, the actual reader identifies himself with the character. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as "poetic" interpretations.
There is no truly typical "fantastic story", as the term generally discusses works of the horror or gothic genre. But two representative stories might be:
- Algernon Blackwood's
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English writer of fiction dealing with the supernatural, who was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
story "The Willows", where two men travelling down the Danube River are beset by an eerie feeling of malice and several improbable setbacks in their trip; the question that pervades the story is whether they are falling prey to the wilderness and their own imaginations, or if there really is something horrific out to get them.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the...
's story "The Black Cat"The Black Cat" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"...
," where a murderer is haunted by a black cat; but is it revenge from beyond the grave, or just a cat?
A clear distinction between the Fantastic and
magic realismMagic realism, or magical realism, is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting...
is that the latter does not privilege either realistic or supernatural elements, nor ask the reader or characters to do so.
The Fantastic is sometimes erroneously called the
GrotesqueThe word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome in the 15th century...
or
Supernatural fictionSupernatural fiction is a classification of literature used to describe fiction exploiting or requiring as plot devices or themes some contradictions of the commonplace natural world and materialist assumptions about it...
, because both the Grotesque and the Supernatural contain fantastic elements, yet they are not the same, as the fantastic is based on an ambiguity of those elements.
Examples of writers of Fantastic literature include:
- many of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the...
's short works
- Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humorist, and dramatist. His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing and identity....
's "The Nose"
- Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was a Russian contemporary novelist and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century...
- Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English writer of fiction dealing with the supernatural, who was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T...
's works
- Sheridan Le Fanu
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the premier ghost story writer of the nineteenth century and had a seminal influence on the development of this genre in the Victorian era.-Biography:Sheridan Le Fanu was born at 45 Lower Dominick Street,...
's works in "In a Glass Darkly"
- Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J...
's Gormenghast series
- E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann...
's works, notably Der SandmannThe Sandman is a short story written in German by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was the first in a book of stories titled Die Nachtstücke ....
, "The Golden Flower Pot", and "The Nutcracker and the King of Mice"
- Gerard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...
's "Aurelia"
In Elizabethan slang, a 'fantastic' was a fop; an "improvident young gallant" who was obsessed with showy dress. The character Lucio in Shakespeare's
Measure for MeasureMeasure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was originally classified as a comedy, but is now also classified as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, the play's first recorded performance was...
is described in the Dramatis Personae as a 'Fantastic'.
It should be noted that in popular usage, the word "fantastic" has become a casual term of approval, a synonym for "great" or "brilliant", and this has to a great extent supplanted the original meaning of the word. However, the
Concise Oxford English DictionaryConcise Oxford English Dictionary is probably the best-known of the 'smaller' Oxford dictionaries...
still lists the original meaning first, with the popular meaning listed second and described as "informal".