The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre / Edition 1

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre / Edition 1

ISBN-10:
0801491460
ISBN-13:
9780801491467
Pub. Date:
05/31/1975
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
ISBN-10:
0801491460
ISBN-13:
9780801491467
Pub. Date:
05/31/1975
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre / Edition 1

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre / Edition 1

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Overview

In The Fantastic, Tzvetan Todorov seeks to examine both generic theory and a particular genre, moving back and forth between a poetics of the fantastic itself and a metapoetics or theory of theorizing, even as he suggest that one must, as a critic, move back and forth between theory and history, between idea and fact. His work on the fantastic is indeed about a historical phenomenon that we recognize, about specific works that we may read, but it is also about the use and abuse of generic theory.

As an essay in fictional poetics, The Fantastic is consciously structuralist in its approach to the generic subject. Todorov seeks linguistic bases for the structural features he notes in a variety of fantastic texts, including Potocki's The Sargasso Manuscript, Nerval's Aurélia, Balzac's The Magic Skin, the Arabian Nights, Cazotte's Le Diable Amoureux, Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and tales by E. T. A. Hoffman, Charles Perrault, Guy de Maupassant, Nicolai Gogol, and Edgar A. Poe.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801491467
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 05/31/1975
Series: Cornell Paperbacks Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 190
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.45(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Tzvetan Todorov is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. A native of Bulgaria living in France for over four decades, he is among the most influential literary and cultural theorists writing today. Among his many books available in English translation are Theories of the Symbol and Symbolism and Interpretation, both available from Cornell.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Robert Scholes
1. Literary Genres
2. Definition of the Fantastic
3. The Uncanny and the Marvelous
4. Poetry and Allegory
5. Discourse of the Fantastic
6. Themes of the Fantastic: Introduction
7. Themes of the Self
8. Themes of the Other
9. Themes of the Fantastic: Conclusion
10. Literature and the Fantastic
Index

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From the Publisher

This work is much more than what its title might imply to an American reader. It is not simply another 'formalist' categorizing of a particular literary genre. Todorov involves himself in a consideration of the concept of literary genre (with a perceptive critique of Northrop Frye), a detailed and perceptive discourse on 'the fantastic,'... and finally a philosophical-historical discussion of the relation of 'the fantastic' to literature itself.... This is an important work for anyone interested in criticism in general or in the criticism of fiction in particular.

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