A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic

by Christine Brooke-Rose

Overview

This 1981 book is a study of wide range of fiction, from short stories to tales of horror, from fairy-tales and romances to science fiction, to which the rather loose term 'fantastic' has been applied. Cutting across this wide field, Professor Brooke-Rose examines in a clear and precise way the essential differences between these types of narrative against the background of realistic fiction. In doing so, she employs many of the methods of modern literary theory from Russian formalism to structuralism, while at the same time bringing to these approaches a sharp critical intuition and sound common sense of her own. The range of texts considered is broad: from Poe and James to Tolkien; from Flann O'Brien to the American postmodernism. This book should prove a source of stimulation to all teachers and students of modern literary theory and genre, as well as those interested in 'fantastic' literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521276566
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/31/1983
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Part I. The Real, the Unreal and the Rhetoric: 1. The real and the unreal; 2. The rhetoric; Part II. Method and Non-method in Genre Analysis: 3. Historic genres/theoretical genres: Torodov on the fantastic; 4. Science fiction and realistic fiction; Part III. The Pure Fantastic: Types of Analysis: 5. The encoded reader; 6. The Turn of the Screw and its critics: an essay in non-methodology; 7. The Turn of the Screw; mirror structures as basic structures; 8. The surface structures in The Turn of the Screw; Part IV. The Unreal as Real: the Modern Marvellous: 9. The evil ring: realism and the marvellous; 10. Titan plus: the new science fiction (Vonnegut and McElroy); Part V. The Real as Unreal: Some Modern Texts: 11. The real as unreal: Robbe-Grillet; 12. Transgressions; 13. Eximplosions; 14. Metafiction and surfiction: a simpler formal approach; Notes; Bibliography; Index.