Reader Journal

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
Tzvetan Todorov

 
"Poetics can help us to see the literary quality in bumper stickers, or, conversely, the lack of literariness in the classics themselves. Poetics, truly understood, is a liberation from prejudice, an opening of the mind, creating new opportunities for readers and writers" (vii-viii).
Todorov interprets Aristotle's Poetics as an early form of structuralist theory. He applies a scientific analytical approach to texts in his effort to define the fantastic as a genre. When reading, he searches for principles operating within the texts, rather than specifics. At the start of research, one formulates the question: What defines the fantastic as a literary genre? This raises other questions, such as must one read every work in the genre in order to study it, and how many genres are there? Todorov states his intent to read broad sampling of the works and use the scientific method to make deductions and test hypotheses to verify theories. He further states genres are relativistic, akin to binomial classification. His initial conclusion is theory of genres cannot be strictly confirmed nor invalidated.
That stated, Todorov posits his theory of the fantastic as ambiguity. "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event" (25). This definition breaks down into three conditions: (1) the reader must presume the fictional world obeys the same scientific laws as objective reality, so hesitates between natural and supernatural explanations for the story events; (2) a character may also hesitate between the two possible explanation; and (3) the reader will not mistake the text as poetry of allegory. The last defining characteristic of the fantastic in literature is its transitional nature.
At or by the end of a fantastic tale, the story enters the realm of the uncanny or the marvelous, leaving ambiguity behind. The hesitation is over. The uncanny is the realm of the natural, as evidenced by rational explanations for the event. The marvelous is the realm of the supernatural, as evidenced by explanations most often found in science fiction. While there are several types of marvelous, their commonality is based upon the idea that such factors could exist, but do not. Poetry and allegory differ from the fantastic in that there is no hesitation between possible explanations because the situation is at least one degree from acceptable consensual reality.
The main reason poetry and allegory don't work as examples of the fantastic is readers don't wonder about explanations for events in an unreal world. Reader perception is key to the fantastic. The reader must hesitate between the possible explanations as much or more than the characters. Writers of fantastic fiction make this happen by using diction and the speech acts of narrators and characters. Diction allows the writer to make the figurative literal ('go to Hell – there's the door'), to exaggerate for effect, and use figurative language ('if', 'seemed' 'would') to heighten doubt. Literature allows no test for truth, so the writer's responsibility is to craft a tale with validity and proof of internal coherence. When the reader looks back, he or she must be able to see the clues add up to the final explanation, with no contradictions. Writers can work around this through utterances of narrators and characters. The 'I narrator stands for the confused reader. This means, in all but a rare exception, the statements made by the 'I' narrator are not lies. The most popular exception is the narrator in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . Thus, the narrator doesn't lie, characters can lie, and a character who narrates can lie. Overall, the syntactical aspect only works once, as is the case with mystery novels; once you know the answer, you no longer question. There is no tension.
Todorov maintains the themes of fantastic fiction are those of the self and those of the other."The self signifies the relative isolation of man in the world he constructs…The other, in contrast, refers precisely to that intermediary, and it is the third relation which is at the basis of the network. The opposition is asymmetrical; the self is present in the other, but not conversely" (155). Themes of the self center on the relationship between man and his environment via perception. Reality is more subjective than objective. This is often represented by glasses and mirrors. Themes of the other center on man's desire for what is outside of himself. He may not be aware of his desire, but it drives him, transforms him, and becomes increasingly excessive. He wants the other, but he can never have it. A part of himself is missing and he'll never get it back. Still, he desires them and those desires drive the quests of the fantastic.
Why write stories of the fantastic? This genre allows you to write about the forbidden, the taboo, without alienating the reader. The fantastic is a safe zone, were readers can look at racism, bigotry, and other dark aspects of their society from another perspective. When a writer creates a world of the fantastic, the fantastic swallows the world and the reader with it. The writer can raise any question, so long as he or she does not answer that question too soon.