"The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre" by Tzevtan Todorov

The book is broken into 10 sections: literary genres; definition of the fantastic; the uncanny and the marvelous; poetry and allegory; discourse of the fantastic; themes of the fantastic-introduction; themes of the self; themes of the other; themes of the fantastic-conclusion; and literature of the fantastic.

In summation, Todorov's theory states that "the fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty [between the uncanny and the marvelous]. 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). Also, it is important that this hesitation occurs on the part of the reader, although it is usually on part of the main character as well (26).

For Todorov, the uncanny describes events where "the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomenon described" and the marvelous is where "new laws of nature need to be entertained to account for the phenomena" (41). Examples of the uncanny include the phenomena being produced by madness or drug use; the marvelous includes ghost stories or those stories where magic is the only possible explanation for events. Todorov also allows for sub-genres of the fantastic-uncanny and fantastic-marvelous, where the hesitation between experiences is ultimately resolved either rationally (uncanny) or with a supernatural explanation (marvelous) (44).

Todorov's theory is interesting when considering works like Potocki's The Saragossa Manuscript and considering work of Edgar Allan Poe, who Todorov states mostly works in the uncanny ("Fall of the House of Usher") and the marvelous, but only occasionally in the fantastic ("The Black Cat") (48). For Todorov and his structuralist approach, via semantics the genre of the fantastic is able "to transcend the old dichotomy of form and content, in order to consider the work as a totality and a dynamic unity" (94), a result of these worlds being created that do not exist outside language.

Interesting perhaps for selected works, but not entirely convincing. Todorov's analysis of fantastic tropes (i.e. ghosts, vampires, devils) his argument loses steam as he tries to wedge them into his structural--and highly Freudian--framework. He goes as far to say that "psychoanalysis has replaced (and thereby has made useless) the literature of the fantastic" (160) because old taboos of forbidden love, incest, necrophilia, etc. can now be talked about openly and do not need the guise of fantasy. Furthermore, Lem asks the question "Why does the literature of the fantastic no longer exist?" (166), and points the finger at Kafka. For Todorov, Kafka's fictions accomplish a major reversal: "what in the first world was an exception here becomes the rule" (174). The idea of a "normal" world is so far gone that incredible events become passe.

Overall, Todorov's theory may be interesting for a limited subset of works, but to define the genre? As Lem says in his response, in this theory "we find no Borges, no Verne, no Wells, nothing from modern fantasy, and all of SF is represented by two short stories." Lem goes on to further splinter the theory into exception after exception, concluding that "A theory of literature either embraces all works or it is no theory. A theory of works weeded out in advance by means beyond its compass constitutes not generalization but its contrary, that is particularization."

To further Lem's point, what about Haruki Murakami? Much of his short fiction seem to feature these tell-tale moments of hesitation, while others do not. Most of his fictions take place in our contemporary world and the moments of the fantastic are pocket-sized, and quite possibly the result of strange coincidences rather than any supernatural event--"Birthday Girl," "The Mirror," and "Nausea 1979" all seem to fit the bill for Todorov's definition, but they would seem to have far more in common with a postmodern aesthetic rather than the 19th century works Todorov favors.

Overall, Todorov's theory collapses at the slightest push. Rather than attempting to outline a theory that applied to an (ill-defined) genre, Todorov would have been better off writing a theory of liminal literature and the unique work such fictions can achieve. Simply too much of his theory does not hold up under scrutiny.