Fantastique
Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre and mode that is characterized by the intrusion of supernatural 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", which is associated with the broader term of fantasy in the English literary tradition. According to the literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, the fantastique 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. The genre emerged in the 18th century and knew a golden age in 19th century Europe, particularly in France and Germany.
Definition
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 and Introduction à la littérature fantastique of Tzvetan Todorov. In these three essays, the fantastique is defined as the intrusion of supernatural phenomena into an otherwise realist 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 the fantastique is somewhere between the French concept of "marvellous", where the supernatural is accepted and entirely reasonable in the imaginary world of a non-realist narrative, and the uncanny, where apparently supernatural phenomena are explained according to realist precepts and accepted as normal. In an English speaking theoretical perspective, it can therefore been considered as a subgenre of fantasy.Instead, characters in a work of fantastique 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. The fantastique 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 of fantastique.
The French concept of fantastique in literature should therefore not be confused with the marvellous or fantasy, with science fiction 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, since the term was translated as above in the English translation of Todorov's essay. 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 as in the works of Eric Rabkin, Rosemary Jackson, Lucy Armitt and David Sandner. 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 Stanislaw Lem.
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 term médiéval-fantastique to refer to high fantasy, but it is not a term used by academic critics.
Related genres
The fantastique 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's The 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.The fantastique narratives also differs from fantasy ones, such as those by J. 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. The fantastique then combines the same characteristics as intrusion fantasy as defined by Farah Mendlesohn. The fantastique is also related to magic 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 the fantastique.
Tzvetan Todorov thus defines the fantastique as being somewhere between the uncanny, i.e. a reality whose limits are pushed to the limit, as in Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, in which a rational analysis can be adopted, and the marvellous, where supernatural elements are considered normal: the fantastique 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 the fantastique, 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 the fantastique.
The Fantastique can encompass both works of the horror and gothic genres. Two representative stories might be:
- Algernon Blackwood's story "The Willows", where two men traveling down the Danube River are beset by an eerie feeling of malice and several improbable setbacks in their trip; the question that pervades the story is whether they are falling prey to the wilderness and their own imaginations, or if there really is something horrific out to get them.
- Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Black Cat", where a murderer is haunted by a black cat; but is it revenge from beyond the grave, or just a cat?
In Russian literature, the "fantastic" encompasses science fiction, fantasy, and other non-realistic genres.
History
Origins
When Charles Nodier wants to invent a fantastique history, when Nerval recalls Cazotte as an initiator in spite of himself, they both refer without hesitation to The Golden Ass by Apuleius. The hero of the Metamorphoses 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 the fantastique and foreshadows the future course of picaresque heroes. Only the beginning, when the witches' magic remains uncertain, could be considered fantastique. Works of fantastique, however, only began to appear in the 18th century, and this type of literature reached its golden age in the 19th century.From Marvellous to Fantastique
was the link between the Merveilleux 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 the soul—a serious concern for a nation which had just come out of an era of great religious persecution—and they appropriately reflected the grandeur of the Sun King's reign. Even if fairy tales and marvellous novels don't belong to the fantastique, they contributed to the emergence of the genre in Europe, since the creatures found in fantastique literature that invade reality often come from marvellous literature.Cazotte is often considered as the creator of the fantastique genre in France with his novel Le Diable amoureux, sub-titled un 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 was Vathek, a novel written directly into French in 1787 by English-born writer William Thomas Beckford. A Byronic figure steeped in occult knowledge and sexual perversions, Beckford allegedly wrote his novel non-stop in three days and two nights in a state of trance. Finally, in 1813, the very strange Le Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse'' was published. Like Vathek, it was written directly into French by a non-French writer, the Polish count and scientist Jan Potocki.