Fantastique is a French term for aliterary andcinematic genre andmode that is characterized by the intrusion ofsupernatural elements into the realistic framework of a story, accompanied by uncertainty about their existence. The concept comes from the French literary and critical tradition, and is distinguished from the word "fantastic",[1] which is associated with the broader term offantasy in the English literary tradition.[2][3][4][5] According to the literary theoristTzvetan Todorov (Introduction à la littérature fantastique), thefantastique is distinguished from the marvellous by the hesitation it produces between the supernatural and the natural, the possible and the impossible, and sometimes between the logical and the illogical. The marvellous, on the other hand, appeals to the supernatural in which, once the presuppositions of a magical world have been accepted, things happen in an almost normal and familiar way.[6] The genre emerged in the 18th century and knew a golden age in 19th century Europe, particularly in France and Germany.
Three major critical sources in French literary theory give the same fundamental definition of the concept:Le Conte fantastique en France de Nodier à Maupassant of Pierre-Georges Castex,De la féerie à la science-fiction of Roger Caillois andIntroduction à la littérature fantastique of Tzvetan Todorov.[7] In these three essays, thefantastique is defined as the intrusion ofsupernatural phenomena into an otherwiserealist narrative. It evokes phenomena which are not only left unexplained but which are inexplicable from the reader's point of view. In this respect, Tzvetan Todorv explains that thefantastique is somewhere between the French concept of "marvellous" (merveilleux), where the supernatural is accepted and entirely reasonable in the imaginary world of a non-realist narrative, and the uncanny (étrange in French), where apparently supernatural phenomena are explained according to realist precepts and accepted as normal.[6] In an English speaking theoritical perspective, it can therefore been considered as a subgenre of fantasy.
Instead, characters in a work offantastique are, just like the readers, unwilling to accept the supernatural events that occur. This refusal may be mixed with doubt, disbelief, fear, or some combination of those reactions. Thefantastique is often linked to a particular ambiance, a sort of tension in the face of the impossible. A good deal of fear is often involved, either because the characters are afraid or because the author wants to provoke fright in the reader. However, fear is not an essential component offantastique.[8]
The French concept offantastique in literature should therefore not be confused with the marvellous or fantasy (where the supernatural is posited and accepted from the outset), with science fiction (which is rational) or with horror, although these genres can be combined.
However, the English term "fantastic" can sometimes be used in the French sense as in the Literary Encyclopedia,[9] since the term was translated as above in the English translation of Todorov's essay.[10] This is nonetheless a minority use and much of the English critical literature that discusses fantastic literature associates the word with a broader meaning related to fantasy[1] as in the works of Eric Rabkin,[2] Rosemary Jackson,[3] Lucy Armitt[4] and David Sandner.[5] The polysemy of the word fantastic and the difference of critical traditions of each country have led to controversies such as the one led by Sanislaw Lem.[11]
The word is also polysemous in French: a distinction must be made between the academic definition and the everyday meaning. In everyday language, the word can refer to anything to do with the supernatural. Some people use in French the termmédiéval-fantastique to refer to high fantasy, but it is not a term used by academic critics.
Thefantastique is often considered to be very close to science fiction. However, there are important differences between them: science fiction is not supernatural, but rational. H. G. Wells'sThe Time Machine, for example, is a science-fiction novel because the hero travels back in time using a machine designed for the purpose—in other words, using a technological process that, while unknown in the current state of human knowledge, is presented as technological and therefore cannot be described as supernatural.[12]
Thefantastique narratives also differs from fantasy ones, such as those byJ. R. R. Tolkien, when in fact they belong to the realm of the marvellous. It should also be noted that in the English-speaking world,fantastique literature is not considered a separate genre, but rather a sub-genre of low fantasy. Thefantastique then combines the same characteristics as intrusion fantasy as defined by Farah Mendlesohn.[13] Thefantastique is also related tomagic realism, a genre based as well on the insertion of supernatural elements into a realistic narrative. However, the supernatural is considered normal, making magic realism a branch of the marvellous rather than thefantastique.
Tzvetan Todorov thus defines thefantastique as being somewhere between the uncanny, i.e. a reality whose limits are pushed to the limit, as inEdgar Allan Poe'sThe Fall of the House of Usher, in which a rational analysis can be adopted, and the marvellous, where supernatural elements are considered normal: thefantastique is this in-between, this moment when the mind still hesitates between a rational and irrational explanation. As a final condition for the appearance of thefantastique, he adds a realistic universe or context: the setting must be perceived as natural in order to introduce the marks of the supernatural, and thus the hesitation that leads to thefantastique.[6]
The Fantastique can encompass both works of the horror and gothic genres. Two representative stories might be:
The fantastique is sometimes erroneously called theGrotesque orSupernatural fiction, because both the Grotesque and the Supernatural contain fantastic elements, yet they are not the same, as the fantastique is based on an ambiguity of those elements.
InRussian literature, the "fantastic" (фантастика) encompassesscience fiction (called "science fantastic", научная фантастика),fantasy, and other non-realistic genres.
WhenCharles Nodier wants to invent afantastique history, whenNerval recalls Cazotte as an initiator in spite of himself, they both refer without hesitation toThe Golden Ass (also calledMetamorphoses) byApuleius (1st c. AD). The hero of theMetamorphoses is supposed to come to a particularly mysterious region of Greece, Thessaly. The witches of this province were renowned, and the protagonist Lucius was transformed into a donkey after using the wrong ointment. A whole section of the novel, from the moment Lucius is metamorphosed to the moment he regains his primitive form, escapes thefantastique and foreshadows the future course of picaresque heroes. Only the beginning, when the witches' magic remains uncertain, could be consideredfantastique. Works offantastique, however, only began to appear in the 18th century, and this type of literature reached its golden age in the 19th century.[14]
Baroque (whether in the form ofnovels,plays or evenoperas) was the link between theMerveilleux of the Renaissance and the more formalized fairy tales of the Enlightenment period. The undeniable popularity of the genre was, in great part, attributable to the fact that Fairy Tales were safe; they did not imperil thesoul—a serious concern for a nation which had just come out of an era of greatreligious persecution—and they appropriately reflected the grandeur of the Sun King's reign. Even if fairy tales and marvellous novels don't belong to thefantastique, they contributed to the emergence of the genre in Europe, since the creatures found infantastique literature that invade reality often come from marvellous literature.[14]
Cazotte is often considered as the creator of the fantastique genre in France with his novelLe Diable amoureux (The Devil in Love, 1772),[15] sub-titledun roman fantastique, so labeled for the first time in literary history. In it, a young nobleman, Alvare, conjures up a demon who assumes the shape of a beautiful woman, Biondetta. At the end of the story, the young woman disappears, and we don't know if she ever really existed. Another work in the same vein wasVathek, a novel written directly into French in 1787 by English-born writerWilliam Thomas Beckford. AByronic figure steeped in occult knowledge andsexual perversions, Beckford allegedly wrote his novel non-stop in three days and two nights in a state oftrance. Finally, in 1813, the very strangeLe Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa) was published. Like Vathek, it was written directly into French by a non-French writer, thePolish count and scientistJan Potocki.[15]
The real source of thefantastique genre is the English Gothic novel of late 1785. In addition to the emergence offantastique themes (ghosts, the Devil, vampires), these novels, characterised by a more pronounced atmosphere of horror, introduced the ambiguity characteristic of the genre. Among the most representative works areHorace Walpole'sThe Castle of Otranto,Matthew Gregory Lewis'sThe Monk (1796),Ann Radcliffe'sThe Mysteries of Udolpho (1794),William Godwin'sCaleb Williams (1794),Charlotte Dacre'sZofloya, or the Moor (1806) andCharles Robert Maturin'sMelmoth, the Wandering Man (1821).[14]
In France, the discovery of English Gothic novels gave rise to a profusion of so-called "frenetic" novels (roman frénétique) (also known as "roman noir"). Still strongly influenced by the marvellous, these romantic works of the 1830s introduced a taste for horror and the macabre into the French novel.[16]
The frenetic novel reached its apogee with the "petits romantiques".Pétrus Borel, inChampavert, Contes immoraux (1833) and especially inMadame de Putiphar (1839), was even more provocative than the English writers, particularly in his indulgence in the horrible. The cruelty ofChampavert's stories foreshadowsAuguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. What's more, Borel wrote a trulyfantastique tale,Gottfried Wolfgang (1843).
Among the outstanding works of the French Gothic period are novels which, having been written with the aim of parodying the tales of Lewis and Radcliffe, have become authentic roman noir. The literary critic Jules Janin wroteL'âne mort et la femme guillotinée (1829). Similarly, Frédéric Soulié'sLes mémoires du Diable which combined theroman frénétique with the passions of theMarquis de Sade.
Notable works in that category include:
Fantastique literature in the strict sense of the terme was born in Germany in the early 19th century, withAdelbert von Chamisso (Peter Schlemihl), thenAchim von Arnim andE.T.A. Hoffmann. Hoffmann's fantastique is characterised by exaltation, chaos and frenzy. The novelThe Devil's Elixirs, which claims to be a descendant of Lewis'sThe Monk, often incoherently accumulates episodes of very different kinds: a love story, aesthetic or political meditations, picaresque adventures, a family epic, mystical ecstasies, etc. The theme of madness and solitude is central to both Hoffmann's and Chamisso's work.[17]
Hoffmann had a universal and almost continuous influence on the genre. His tales form a veritable repertoire of thefantastique, subsequently adapted by other authors and in other arts (opera, ballet, cinema).
From the 1830s, Hoffmann's tales were translated into French by Loève-Veimars and met a spectacular success. After Jacques Cazotte'sLe Diable amoureux,Nodier was one of the first French writers to writefantastique tales. However, he saw this genre as nothing more than a new way of writing marvellous stories;[18] for him, fantastique was a pretext for dreaming and fantasy. In fact, he wrote a study on the fantastique, which shows that for Nodier the line between the marvellous and the fantastique is quite blurred. Populated by ghosts, vampires and the undead, his texts nevertheless possess the hallmarks of the fantastique: ambiguity, uncertainty and disquiet. His best-known tales areSmarra ou les démons de la nuit [Smarra, or The Demons Of The Night] (1821), a series of terrifying dream-based tales,Trilby ou le lutin d'argail (1822),La Fée aux miettes (1832). In this last work, a young carpenter is devoted to the eponymous Fairy, who may be the legendaryQueen of Sheba. In order to restore her to her true form, he searches for the magical SingingMandragore.[19]
Then several of the greatest names in French literature stated to write in this genre.Honoré de Balzac, author of a dozen fairy tales and three fantastique novels, was also influenced byHoffmann. Apart fromL'Élixir de longue vie (1830) andMelmoth réconcilié (1835), his main fantastique work isLa Peau de chagrin (1831), in which the main character has made a pact with the Devil: he buys a skin of sorrow that has the power to grant all his wishes but which, symbolising his life, shrinks every time he uses it. Despite the fantastique component, this novel is rooted in realism: Balzac uses description to paint the sights of Paris; he brings in the psychology and social situation of his characters. However, Balzac's fantastique work is not conceived as an end in itself. At the very least, Balzac does not seek to frighten or surprise the reader, and does not involve vampires or werewolves of any kind. Rather, it is a work of reflection, set within the framework of theComédie humaine.[20] Through the allegorical power of his characters and situations, Balzac is above all writing philosophical tales. We can mention as wellFalthurne (1820) byHonoré de Balzac, a novel about a virgin prophetess who knows occult secrets that date back to AncientMesopotamia. Also of note by Balzac:Le Centenaire [The Centenarian], about a man seeking higher dimensions, the aptly namedLa Recherche de l'Absolu [The Search For The Absolute] (1834), whose hero is an alchemist, andMelmoth Réconcilié [Melmoth Reconciled] (1835).
A great admirer of Hoffmann,Théophile Gautier is a key writer of fantastique literature. Inhabited by fantastique and the desire to escape, his tales are among the most accomplished in terms of storytelling technique. Gautier excels at keeping the reader guessing throughout his stories, and surprising them at the punch line. He wrote a number of masterpieces that regularly feature in anthologies devoted to the fantastique, such asLa Cafetière (1831) andLa Morte amoureuse (1836).[21] InLa Morte Amoureuse,Théophile Gautier told the story of a young priest who falls in love with a beautiful female vampire. In it, the vampire is not a soulless creature, but a loving and erotic woman. Gautier'sAvatar (1856) andSpirite (1866) areroman spirites which deal with the theme of life after death.
Prosper Mérimée wrote only a very small number of fantastique works (a few short stories at most), but they are of the highest quality.La Vénus d'Ille (1837), in particular, is one of the most famous short stories in the genre: it features a pagan statue that comes to life and kills a young groom on his wedding night.Lokis andVision de Charles XI are also among his successes.[22] Mérimée also translatedPushkin's "The Queen of Spades", and published a study onNicholas Gogol, the master of Russian fantastique.
Guy de Maupassant is clearly one of the greatest authors of fantastique literature. His work is marked by realism, the genre in which he built his reputation, and is firmly rooted in everyday life.[23] His recurring themes are fear, anxiety and, above all, madness, which he fell into shortly before his death. These themes can be found in his masterpiece,Le Horla (1887). In the form of a diary, the narrator recounts his anxieties caused by the presence of an invisible being. The hesitation is based on the narrator's possible madness. In Maupassant's work, the blend of realism and fantastique is often driven by the madness of one of the protagonists, bringing his distorted vision of the world into the real world. The Horla, a word coined by Maupassant, most likely means "Out there", implying that this invisible being comes from another world. There are two versions of Le Horla by the same author: the second version ends with the main character being committed to a psychiatric hospital.[24]
In 1839,Gérard de Nerval collaborated with Alexandre Dumas onL'Alchimiste [The Alchemist]. Mentally unhinged after a lover's death, Nerval developed an interest in mystical beliefs, especially in his bookLes Illuminés. After writing fantastique texts influenced by the German Romanticism ofGoethe and Hoffmann,Gérard de Nerval wrote a major work,Aurélia (1855), in a more poetic and personal style. He also wrote another text in a similar style,La Pandora (1854).
Other notable works at that time include:
The end of the 19th century saw the rise of so-called "decadent" literature, whose favourite themes were cruelty, vice and perversity. In the wake of works such asJoris-Karl Huysmans'À rebours [Against Nature] (1884),Là-Bas [Down There] (1891) andJules Barbey d'Aurevilly'sLes Diaboliques, fantastique was no longer an end in itself, but a means of conveying a provocation, a denunciation or an aesthetic desire. During this period, there were no longer any "fantastique writers", but many authors who wrote a few fantastique texts. Tales became more mannered, descriptions became richer, and exoticism and eroticism became important elements. Finally, the fantastique tale provided an opportunity for social criticism, often directed against bourgeois materialism, as inVilliers de L'Isle-Adam'sContes cruels [Cruel Tales] (1883) and Tribulat Bonhomet (1887). The decadent Symbolists also made extensive use of fantastique in their tales, which were not far removed from fable and allegory.[26]
Léon Bloy wrote two collections of stories,Sueurs de sang (1893) andHistoires désobligeantes (1894). Although not all his stories are fantastique, they do have a strange or supernatural ring to them. Writing in an incendiary style, Bloy was determined to shock his readers with the cruelty of his stories. Another writer who made anything cruel, unhealthy or sordid his favourite source of inspiration wasJean Lorrain, author ofMonsieur de Phocas, one of the key works of fin de siècle literature. His many fantastique tales can be found in several collections, the best of which is undoubtedlyHistoires de masques (1900). We can mention as wellBuveurs d'Âmes [Soul Drinkers] (1893), "Les contes d'un buveur d'éther" and the kabbalistic novelLa Mandragore (1899).
The Symbolist authorMarcel Schwob, hardly unmoved to the deleterious atmosphere of decadent works, managed to reconcile this aesthetic with the vein of the fantastic. Using the marvellous and the power of allegory, he wrote two collections of tales,Cœur Double (1891) andLe Roi au masque d'or (1892). The collectionHistoires magiques (1894) by another symbolist writer,Rémy de Gourmont, in which the influence of Villiers de L'Isle-Adam is undeniable, is also worth mentioning, and is the only one by its author to contain fantastique tales.
In 1919,Henri de Régnier wrote a collection of three important fantastique stories,Histoires incertaines, whose aesthetic is directly influenced by fin de siècle literature.
Other notable works of this category include:
Victorian England produced few fantastique writers in the strict sense of the term, as the subtle ambiguities inherent in the genre found little echo in the English literary tradition.Thomas de Quincey's short stories, for example, are more clearly in the tradition of the Gothic novel than that of fantastique. The IrishmanSheridan Le Fanu wroteCarmilla (1871), a Gothic novel whose originality lies in the character of the homosexual female vampire. It inspired the famousDracula by his compatriotBram Stoker (1897), the undisputed masterpiece of vampire stories.Oscar Wilde also wrote one of the most famous Anglo-Saxon fantastique novels,The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1891), in which the main character sees his portrait age and take on every mark of his vices, while he possesses eternal youth and indulges in every excess. In this text, Wilde develops his thoughts on aestheticism and depicts the conflict between physical and moral decay. Sensuality and homosexuality also permeate the work. Far beyond the realm of fantastique, this novel had a strong influence on French literature, particularly on decadent writers.[27] Oscar Wilde also wrote a parody of a ghost story,The Canterville Ghost (1887).
One British writer, Arthur Llewelyn Jones, also known asArthur Machen, was born on 3 March 1863 in Wales and died on 15 December 1947 (aged 84) in England. He is particularly associated with fantastique literature, notably with his first novel,The Great God Pan (1894). The Anglo-American writerHenry James regularly tackled fantastique in the course of his literary career, and more specifically ghost stories.[28] His most accomplished work isThe Nutcracker (1898), a benchmark in the art of vacillating between rational and irrational explanations. James's allusive style leads the reader to doubt each of the protagonists in turn, so that the ultimate truth of the story is not revealed at the end; that choice is left to the reader. This book is also remarkable for the ghostly nature of its characters.[29]
Other famous writers have penned some fantastique texts, includingRobert Louis Stevenson (Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, "Markheim", "Olalla") andRudyard Kipling.
This period also saw the birth of new genres of popular literature close to the fantastique: mystery fiction withWilkie Collins,science fiction withH. G. Wells andMary Shelley, andfantasy withWilliam Morris andGeorge MacDonald.
At its birth in the early 19th century, American literature was strongly influenced by the English Gothic novel and fantastique.Nathaniel Hawthorne, thenWashington Irving and above allEdgar Allan Poe also made the short story and the tale their preferred forms of expression. Poe also played a special role in developing his own aesthetic theory. He was also one of the pioneers of science fiction and detective fiction. Washington Irving, one of the first great American writers, wrote many tales that were closer to legend than to the supernatural strictly speaking. He is characterised by his realism and ironic tone. His best-known collection is theSketch Book (1819), which contains the tale ofRip Van Winckle, one of the first two truly original American works of fantastique, along withWilliam Austin'sPeter Rugh, the Missing (1824).[30]
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a number of works involving the supernatural.[31] They are marked by oppression in Puritan America, and have the recurring theme of curses, in reference to legends of witchcraft. Although fantastique occupies little space in his abundant output,Francis Marion Crawford is the author of a collection of high quality in the genre,Wandering Ghosts (1891).[32] While drawing on this tradition,H. P. Lovecraft gave it a particular twist, closer tohorror. Lovecraft went on to inspire many twentieth-century authors, including Stephen King.
Alexander Pushkin introduced the fantastique genre to Russia with his famous short storyThe Queen of Spades (1834). From then on, fantastique became a favourite genre in Russian literature, finding its themes in folk tales and legends. Works such asAleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy'sThe Family of Vourdalak andNikolai Gogol'sThe Frightful Vengeance are examples of fantastique that is close to the marvellous, a character of its own in realist works marked by deep concern and greater sincerity than the literary masterpieces that emerged from the fantastique "craze", particularly in France.[33] Such is the case with Gogol's "The Cloak" andNikolai Leskov'sThe White Eagle. This realism was to be found much later inAndrei Biely's novelPetersburg and inFyodor Sologub'sThe Petty Demon.
Encouraged by Pushkin, Nicholai Gogol published some fantastique tales, the most famous of which are "The Nose" andThe Diary of a Madman, published in the collection of Petersburg short stories. These stories introduced a rather profound change in the nature of the fantastique tradition. Fear played a negligible role, but the absurd and the grotesque became an essential element. This new style was emulated in Russia itself:The Double, one ofDostoyevsky's first novels, was directly inspired by Gogol's work.
The beginning of the 20th century saw the rise of dark, pessimistic fantastique in German-speaking countries. The works published during this period became sources of inspiration for theexpressionist cinema that was developing in Germany.Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932) was one of the greatest fantastique writers of the period. A great lover of the occult, he distilled occultist theories in his novels with the aim of initiating his readers. His most famous novel,The Golem (1915), was inspired by the Kabbalah. It depicts a degraded and miserable humanity in the Jewish quarter of Prague. His other major fantastique novel wasWalpurgis Night (1917). Its theme is violence and collective madness, and it echoes the butchery of the First World War.[34]
A more controversial figure,Hanns Heinz Ewers is the author of an abundant oeuvre which, although it often veers more towards the uncanny than the fantastique, remains largely in the realm of the supernatural. With a pronounced penchant for the macabre, blood and unhealthy eroticism, his works are intended to be provocative and have often been judged immoral. Ewers is best known for his novelMandragore. He wrote another significant novel,The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1909), as well as numerous short stories, the best known of which isThe Spider (1907).[34]
In 1909, the Austrian writer and illustratorAlfred Kubin published a single fantastique novel,The Other Side, which reflects the nightmarish atmosphere of his drawings. This novel, in which dreams and reality form an inextricable skein, is considered by Peter Assman, Kubin's main biographer, to be "an essential step in the development of European fantastique literature".[35]
Other important fantastique works written during this period includeLeo Perutz'sThe Marquis of Bolibar andAlexander Lernet-Holenia'sBaron Bagge. It was also during this period thatFranz Kafka wrote "The Metamorphosis", often considered to be a fantastique short story.[34]
The development of a particular kind of fantasy literature in Belgium in the 20th century is a curious but indisputable fact. It is all the more important to mention it because fantastique plays a central role in Belgian literature in general. Belgian fantastique emerged fromsymbolism andrealism at the end of the nineteenth century.[36] Symbolism created an atmosphere conducive to the intrusion of the supernatural, whether through allegory, enchantment or allusiveness. The major work of this movement isBruges-la-Morte byGeorges Rodenbach (1892). Alongside symbolism, a realist and rustic movement developed, whose main representative wasGeorges Eekhoud. Marked by a realism of excess and hyperbole,[37] his work includes a major collection,Cycles patibulaires (1892).
Two writers helped bring Belgian fantastique to maturity:Franz Hellens andJean Ray.[38] The former, alternating between symbolism and realism, distinguished himself in a genre that is sometimes described as "magic realism". His main works areNocturnal (1919) andLes réalités fantastiques (1923). Jean Ray was a true innovator of supernatural literature in the 20th century. He has the particularity of having considered the fantastique genre as a whole, and devoted himself exclusively to it. He began his career as a pulp writer, using a variety of aliases, and had several stories published inWeird Tales. He is the author of an unbridled fantastique whose greatest success isMalpertuis (1943) and he wrote short stories steeped in the rich, mist-shrouded atmosphere of his native Flanders. Finally,Michel de Ghelderode, in addition to his impressive theatrical work, also wroteSortilèges (1945), a collection of fantastique short stories that is one of the masterpieces of the genre.[39]
The confidence displayed by French Society in the early 1900s was sapped by the slaughter of World War I: the Dadaist and Surrealist movements expressed a desire to break violently with the past. In 1924, theAndré Breton'sManifesto of Surrealism, inspired by Freudian discoveries, challenged the realist attitude, contested the reign of logic and called for imagination and dreams to regain their rights. Breton, however, said little about fantastique. Indeed, the surrealism generally favours the marvellous over the fantastique even if it influenced the genre.[40] A non-literary influence on the fantastique writers was that ofSigmund Freud.
Some of the major contributors of the period include:
Between the wars, thefantastique catered to the masses by providing cheap entertainment in the form offeuilletons such asLe Journal des Voyages (1877–1947),Lectures Pour Tous (1898–1940) andL'Intrépide (1910–1937) and paperbacks from publishers such as Ollendorff, Méricant, Férenczi and Tallandier. Significant names of the times include:
World War II exacted both a huge physical and psychological toll on French culture. France's defeat in 1940, followed by four years of occupation, confronted writers with choices they never before had to face. The discovery of theatom bomb and theCold War introduced sharp new fears. Mainstream French culture increasingly frowned upon works of imagination and preferred instead to embrace the more naturalistic and political concerns of theexistentialists such asJean-Paul Sartre andAlbert Camus. Yet, paradoxically, despite being marginalized by critics and the literary establishment, thefantastique thrived as never before, both in terms of quality and quantity.
Significant foreign influences on French modernfantastique includeFranz Kafka,Jorge Luis Borges,H. P. Lovecraft,Dino Buzzati,Julio Cortázar,Vladimir Nabokov andRichard Matheson. Other more recent influences includedStephen King,Clive Barker, none of whom were well known in France before the early 1980s. In Latin America of the 21st century,[41] authors such asCésar Aira,Roberto Bolaño,José Baroja,Andrés Neuman,Juan Gabriel Vásquez,Jorge Volpi, among others, stand out.
Some of the most interesting authors and works up to the 1980s are:
Other notable authors include:
For Todorov, the fantastique requires the fulfillment 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. The fantastique also explores three conditions; reader’s hesitation, hesitation may be felt by another character, and the reader must have a certain mindset when reading the text. There is also a system to the fantastique that he explores that uses three properties. The utterance which discusses the use of figurative discourse, how everything figurative is taken in a literal sense. The supernatural begins to exist within the fantastique due to exaggeration, figurative expression being taken literal, and how the supernatural originates from the rhetorical figure. Leading into the second property, the act of uttering. In this property, it is most connected to the narrator of the story and the idea (discourse-wise) is that the narrator/character must pass this "test of truth". The narrator is someone who cannot "lie"; they explain the supernatural (marvelous), but doubt in what they say creates the fantastique. The final property is the syntactic aspect. Penzoldt’s theory is what focuses on this property the most.[42]
The structure of the ideal ghost story may be represented as a rising line which leads to the cumulating point... Which is obviously the appearance of the ghost. Most authors try to achieve a certain gradation in their assent to this culmination, first speaking vaguely, then more and more directly.
The fantastique can also represent dreams and wakefulness where the character or reader hesitates as to what is reality or what is a dream. Again the fantastic is found in this hesitation—once it is decided the fantastique ends.[43]
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