Talk:Fantastic (literary genre)

message: "Fantastic" is capitalised throughout, as is other genres. This seems unusual. Any thoughts? Notinasnaid 12:28, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalisation 

message: Some reference should really be made to the work of individuals attempting to define the genre, such as Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical approach and Tzvetan Todorov's more abstract literary-critical approach.
S.H.C. Etheridge 20:29, 3 Dec 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toderov, Freud 

message: The original text is misleading when it says:
* "Examples of writers of Fantastic literature include E.T.A. Hoffmann, Nikolai Gogol, Oscar Wilde, Mikhail Bulgakov, Abram Tertz, and Bernard Malamud"
This implies that the list that follows is of writers who exclusively or mainly wrote pieces in the fantastic genre. It would be preferable to cite particular works when referring to authors.
This list could also be expanded to include Guy de Maupassant (assorted works), Théophile Gautier (La Cafetière), Alphonse Daudet (L'Homme à la cervelle d'or), Edgar Allen Poe (The Black Cat), and others. S.H.C. Etheridge 20:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fantastic authors or fantastic stories? 

message: Any thought on including Todorov's definition from his book "The Fantastic"?  (paraphrased) "First, the text must force the reader to consider the world of the characters as real and existing, as well as oblige the reader to hesitate between a natural and supernatural explanation of the text's contents.  Secondly, the reader must reject allegorical and 'poetic' interpretations of the text.  A third, optional constraint is that the hesitation or ambivalence regarding a real or supernatural explanation of the text's events may be experienced by a character in the text."
: I second that, I just ordered the book, waiting for it to arrive. --Jahsonic 20:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: I'm not sure so who is, might add the movie Hearts in Atlantis (film) to the list ! Maybe the novel too, but i havent read that.
Hi, Im sorry I never actually edit these things, but I just dont understand why someone would post incorrect information on a resource like this.  Anyways, whoever decided to write about Todorov's Fantastic should have read his book Introduction a la litterature fantastique  The uncanny does not fall under the genre of the fantastic.  Firstly the fantastic, says Todorov, falls on the border of two genres: the marvelous and the uncanny.  Secondly, the fantastic is only the fantastic as long as the hesitation exists.  The fantastic will always end when the reader makes the decision whether or not he will use an explanation grounded in the laws of nature to account for the phenominality or grounded in new supernatural laws.  If he does the former, then it is uncanny (the article says the exact opposite here!).  There is much more that needs to be corrected in this article, and I would discourage relying on it.  -----Amye
: I totally agree with the comment above. The section referring to Todorov's interpretation of the fantastic is utterly false and misleading. "Todorov compares this with two other ideas: The Uncanny, wherein the phenomenon turns out to have a rational explanation such as in the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe; or the Marvellous, where there truly is a supernatural explanation for the phenomenon." - is totally incorrect!!! (as Amye points out above) S.H.C. Etheridge 12:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More examples 

message: The Temple of Dagon - H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos
http://www.templeofdagon.com
Fantastic Horror - Original Works of Disturbing Imagination
http://www.fantastichorror.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.127.91.153 (talk) 01:56, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for external links 

message: I suggest splitting the fantastic structurally similar to Todorov's novel into separate categories for clarification to the reader. --Toobulkeh (talk) 16:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for categories 

message: This article has been vandalised, please could an administrator revert it by two versions? The Yowser (talk) 16:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: "The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work The Fantastic."
That's ludicrous! It's merely a transcription of the french word "fantastique". See: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique
Todorov used the word "fantastique" (not as a noun, though, as I recall; he always used it as an adjective), but he did'nt coined it, it's more than a century old. Did Richard Howard, his american translator, introduce the term in English? Maybe, I don't know. Todorov didn't. "The term was originated in a translation by Richard Howard of Tzvetan Todorov's essay 'Introduction à la littérature fantastique', edited in English as 'The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre'". That's more it, I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.32.111.57 (talk) 19:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the term 

message: I propose to merge Fantastic into Fantastique. It would appear that they are equivalent, and that the latter focuses on the French tradition only. Severian79 (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Support merging, though I'd prefer to see it merged into Fantastic as academically, the concept is heavily used globally, with an especially strong research ongoing in Latin America that the article currently doesn't cover (ex. Ana María Barrenechea, Ensayo de una tipologia de la literatura fantástica, 1972; Rosalba Campra, Territorios de la ficción – lo fantástico, 2000). The definition of the fantastic was changed and developed a bit from the French original as most of the so-called "magical realist" fiction of LatAm conflicted with Todorov's original definition and fell into a limbo, as Todorov's original theory didn't take it into account. As an English-language wiki, the Fantastic title would be neutral in presenting a global view of the subject, while the french Fantastique would need a higher bar to fit the wiki's policy of following most of the reputable sources's naming, as many academic sources in LatAm use Fantástico or Fantastico, in line with using "Fantastic" in an english wiki article. Regardless, the merge would be highly positive. YuriNikolai (talk) 21:39, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

text: I completely agree, fantastic should be merged into fantastique. The definition of Todorov is not used at all in the English critical tradition. Fantastic has almost the same meaning as fantasy in works like those of Eric Rabkin's The Fantastic in Literature or David Sandner's Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader. However, the French academic tradition keeps the definition of Todorov (see fantastique). Feirodenn (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

text: As this proposal has been made many times before, both in the discussion of this article and of the fantastique article, I merged the article into Fantastique. I've changed it to a disambiguation article to reflect the polysemy of the word and the difference between the French concept of fantastique, and the use of the word in English literary tradition. Feirodenn (talk) 21:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal