Theorising the fantastic

Abstract

This text seeks to show how theory can be used to enrich the reading of texts; but it starts off with both and advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that the literary fantastic is automatically accepted as an interesting object of study. The (potential) disadvantage is that there is little consensus on what constitutes fantasy: romantic fiction?; science fiction?; children's anthromorphic books?; gothic horror?. This study demonstrates the sterility of that approach and focuses instead on the role of the fantastic as an uncertain and ambiguous problematizing of the accepted conventions of normal reality. With that understanding, it becomes possible not only to look at work in the fantasy genre (however defined) but also at the use of fantasy as a narrative strategy in otherwise straight fiction. Texts such as Lewis Carroll's Alice works and Doris Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell and Iain Banks' The Bridge are discussed.

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