Fantastic

Fantasy, even Fantastik, is a literary genre term that is defined very differently in professional circles. Except Scientifically, the term "fantastic" everything is incredible, spun, wonderful or great. The origin of the term " fantastic literature " is a translation error: ETA Hoffmann's " Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner " was in 1814 as " Contes fantastiques " translated into French, instead of properly designated as " Contes de la fantaisie ".

• 3.1 Process
• 3.2 Representatives and example plants

Definitions of fantasy

The many proposed definitions of literary scholars of the fantastic can be roughly divided into two categories according to Uwe Durst (born 1965 ):

Maxi Minimalist Definition

The maximalist definition includes all narrative texts, in their fictional world, the laws of nature are violated. The fundamental difference to the minimalist approach is that a doubt as to the actuality within fictional supernatural plays no role in the definition.

Thirst differs further in an ahistorical and maximalist in a historical variant genre definition. Ahistorical all texts are attributed to the genre that violate the laws of nature from the perspective of modern science, including the Bible (H. P. Lovecraft ), ancient epics etc. (Harald Fricke ). The historical variant, however, referred only those texts as a fantastic, that after the emergence of realistic literature Convention ( early 18th century ) have emerged and in their world first realistic a supernatural event takes place ( Louis Vax, Roger Caillois ). Both maximalism variants can be differentiated into further sub- groups. For example, expects Marianne custom of fantastic literature and texts in which the supernatural event last realistic explained away is what is rejected by other theorists.

Minimalist Definition

The minimalist definition was first represented by the French structuralist Tzvetan Todorov in a longer literary work. According to Todorov, the fantastic (as opposed to the miraculous, where the supernatural exists beyond any doubt ) by the indecision of the implied reader determined. The within fictional facticity of the miraculous is in doubt. Once the text a decision in favor of bringing about a realistic or wonderful arrangement of the event, he leaves the fantastical. In several texts the reader is not able to figure out due to divergent, given in the text information to the end, whether the miraculous described intratextuell actually exists or or the like on a bluff of the hero, on a staging by fraudsters, drug use, insanity. based.

Todorov's research line was, inter alia, continued by Christine Brooke- Rose (1923-2012) and Thomas Wörtche. Wörtche has Todorov Unschlüssigkeitskriterium to an accurate narrative theoretical basis provided ( macro-and micro-structural destabilization of the narrator as a directorial basis of the fantastic ambivalence ). In recent times, especially the structuralist Uwe Durst has emerged with a consistent minimalist theory. The scientifically -based criterion of the supernatural is with him replaced by the literary convention -related criterion of the miraculous, which confronts the supernatural in a ratio of relative autonomy. The advantage of minimalism looks thirst especially in the terminological clarification, which allows for the accurate description and Terminologisierung of texts, the marginalized in the course of enforcement of the minimalist fantasy - concept of the genre and are assigned to neighboring categories.

Important terms in the Fantasy Discussion

Fantasy by minimalist definition

Method

To achieve the hesitancy of the reader methods are used in the text that destabilize the narrator ( the authority of the narrator as a guarantor of the narrated world shatter ). Wörtche distinguishes between macro-and micro-structural Destablisierungsverfahren. The former occur when multiple narrators (possibly characters ) contradict each other, the lie, or insanity to make suspicious ( as in Theodor Storm's The Ghost Rider ). A microstructural method is given when the testimony of a single narrator is doubtful in its own speech, eg by Modalisation ( " it seemed to me " ) or grammatical breakdown (as in Hanns Heinz Ewers ' The Spider ). Someone who does not fully has its own language under control, maybe the control of his mind has lost. In this context, also protestations, not to be crazy to call (as in Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart).

Representative and example plants

• E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822): The golden pot
• Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857): The marble statue
• Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): The Tell-Tale Heart
• Theodor Storm (1817-1888): The Ghost Rider
• Jules Verne (1828-1905): The Eissphinx
• William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943): The monkey's paw
• Herbert George Wells (1866-1946): The Time Machine
• Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943): The spider
• Alfred Kubin (1877-1959): The Other Side (novel)
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924): The transformation
• Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937): The Music of Erich Zann
• J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973): The Silmarillion
• Alexander Lernet- Holenia (1897-1976): The Baron Bagge
• Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): The Sand Book
• Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936): Conan the Cimmerian
• Michael Ende (1929-1995): The Neverending Story
• Stephen King ( born 1947 ): The Fornit
• Kirsten Boie (* 1950) who comes through the mirror
• Alban Nikolai Herbst ( * 1955): Thetis. Otherworld
• Christian Kracht ( b. 1966 ): I 'll be here in sunshine and in shadow
• Kurd Laßwitz (1848-1910): Homchen
• Paul Scheer Bart (1863-1915): Lesabéndio. An asteroid novel.
• Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (1925-1991 and 1931-2012): picnic along the way ( filmed as Stalker )
• Haruki Murakami ( b. 1949 ): Hard- Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Neil Gaiman (* 1960): Neverwhere

See also: List of fantasy authors

Political aspects

Under the Alfred Kubin borrowed programmatic title Yes, my dear, we are conservative referenced by the German scholar Peter Cersowsky on many references and parallels between fantastic literature and politically conservative and right positions as fundamentally apolitical and fatalism. As an early example, he cites Edmund Burke, the founder of conservatism, the Central collaborated with his aesthetic considerations on the gothic novel and ghost story of the 18th and 19th centuries; just called the Cersowsky In 1904 publication and translation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe in Germany by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck ( a central representative of the Conservative Revolution) as a prelude to a previously unseen wealth of Fantastic Literature in Germany. A parallel array of technical utopias, from robots Atlantropa the project to the space books Oberth, are closely connected with the technically oriented fantasy or early science fiction.

Cersowsky sees a continuity in this respect over the 1920 addition; because ( humorously ) "as the revolution failed, put the 68ers their Lukács aside and passed the time with Lovecraft. " Nevertheless Cersowsky does not come to the conclusion, fantasy is necessarily a reactionary character.

Anders Lars Gustafsson, using the example of Lovecraft sees the fantasy as fundamentally reactionary - and weddings of fantasy ( and esoteric ) connected with social retrogression; Lothar Baier as Peter Cersowsky contradict this thesis and name the other hand, the element of transgression, the crack and the utopia as potentially emancipatory and as a vehicle of social as technical innovation.