Abstract

The dissertation rethinks the notion of fantasy and the literary genre of The Fantastic by witnessing a series of encounters between selected readers and texts not usually classed as fantastic. There are three chapters and a conclusion which consider in order: Jacques Derrida on Saussure's Cours de linguistique generale, Freud, Lacan, and Nicolas Abraham on Hamlet; Paul de Man on Baudelaire and lyric poetry; and Sartre on Blanchot. The dissertation claims that Tzvetan Todorov's Introduction a la litterature fantastique marks a turning point in the study of "The Fantastic" by not having as its criteria for what counts as fantastic the presence or absence of certain stock figures or props such as: vampires, ghosts, trapdoors, castles, etc. By defining the fantastic in terms of the effects that the fantastic exerts on the reader and the attitudes that the reader is obliged to adopt while reading a particular fantastic text, we argue that Todorov's approach opens the possibility for studying texts under the rubric of "The Fantastic" which may not have the traditional plots or props, but which do cause similar reading effects. The defining characteristic of "the fantastic" is the reader's hesitation between allegorical and representational interpretations of textual elements or events. The fantastic text suspends the faculty of understanding which under normal circumstances would have no trouble giving a report that would answer journalistic questions such as: who? what? when? where? with whom? and so on. Each chapter witnesses something fantastic that goes on between the reader and the text in each instance of reading