Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Literature

by Nancy H. Traill

Overview

In Possible Worlds of the Fantastic Nancy Traill argues that the transformation of the fantastic was the realists’ answer to the intellectual changes of the time, when the ‘fair way of writing’ was no longer credible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487585006
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/15/1995
Series:	Heritage
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

NANCY H. TRAILL teaches in the Division of Humanities, York University.

Editorial Reviews

An examination of fantastic literature positing a new literary theory in which the stories are considered not as a genre but rather as a condition of transformational modes using a possible worlds semantics. Traill (humanities, York U.) describes the cultural conditions that provided a language to transform realism into the fantastic focusing on the work of Charles Dickens, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, and Guy de Maupassant. The theoretical scaffolding for the analysis is based on the interaction between natural and supernatural modes, culminating in 20th century works like Kafka's Metamorphosis and Henry James's Turn of the Screw. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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