observations on the fantastic and metafictional modes.docx

7/27/2019 OBSERVATIONS ON THE FANTASTIC AND METAFICTIONAL MODES.docx

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substantial and irreducible element of the supernatural with which the mortal characters in the story or the

readers become on at least partly familiar terms” (1). This definition contains two elements which are

basic to almost all attempts to define the fantastic: its effect upon the reader (the reader‟s response to it)

and the relationship between what is narrated and the extratextual reality in which we live. W. R. Irwin

reinforces these concepts and adds several original observations:

a matter is within the range of the fantastic if it is judged, whether on the basis of knowledge or of

convention, to be not only outside „reality‟ but also in knowing contravention of „reality‟. Thus,

within the concept of the fantastic is a competition for credence in which an assertive ‘antireal’ plays

against an established real . . . . In this effort, writer and reader knowingly enter upon a conspiracy of intellectual subversiveness, that is, upon a game. (my emphasis, 9)

Irwin notes that our concept of the real is a precondition for the fantastic: the fantastic exists through itsopposition to an extratextual reality. He also asserts that this concept of reality is based upon conventions.

Realism aspires to the artistic representation of this conventional reality, and attempts this through the

establishment of textual conventions which are a reflection of extratextual ones. The subject matter of the

fantastic exists in opposition to this extratextual reality. As literature it therefore exists as antirealism, that

is, its internal rules oppose those of realism.[10]

Another valuable observation which Irwin contributes is that the relationship between text and reader consists of an implicit pact in which the implied reader and the implied narrator agree to the textual

condition “let‟s pretend as if . . .”; any “wonder” created is thus produced under the terms of this pact.The reader‟s acceptance of the narrative is thus based on the grammatical logic of a contrary to fact

statement. Or as Irwin himself states, the fantastic is “the narrative re sult of transforming the condition

contrary to fact into „fact‟ itself (4). This reader -text relationship, as Irwin notes, is clearly ludic. As we

shall see, the opposition of the textual fantastic to the extratextual possible and of the literary conventionsof the fantastic to those of realism are of primary importance to the subversive nature of the fantastic

mode of narrative.

In what is certainly the most widely debated definition

of the fantastic to date, Tzvetan Todorov posits three condi-tions which must exists for a text to be

considered fantastic:

First, the text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living

persons and to hesitate between a natural and supernatural explanation of the events described.

Second, this hesitation may also be experienced by a character . . . the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work. Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to

the text: he will reject allegorical as well as „poetic‟ interpretations. (33)

The first and third of these conditions he considers preconditions for the existence of the “pure” fantastic,the second he claims is optional. Todorov, like Louis Vax before him, asserts that the world of the

characters must be a conventionally acceptable “realistic” world. This implies that the “hesitation”

evoked by the possibly supernatural events narrated is brought about precisely by their presence in the

otherwise realistic world of the narrative. The juxtaposition of two sets of narrative conventions in a text,

in this case the mimetic and the fantastic, is by our definition one of the characteristics of ludic modes of

writing.

Todorov proposes that while the reader experiences the “hesitation” or “uncertainty” descri bed above,

the text operates in the realm of the true fantastic. Although the concept of hesitation as the defining

factor of the fantastic errs by not taking into consideration the implicit pact established between reader

and text, it is nonetheless invaluable for a number of reasons. First of all, it posits a definition which takes

into consideration the reader‟s role in defining this narrative mode. Morevover, the notion suggests that a

narrative may operate in the fantastic mode during part of the narration without the whole text being

qualified as fantastic. It therefore becomes possible, and I argue necessary, to treat the fantastic not as a

genre (with all the problematic theoretical baggage which that term carries with it) but as a mode. [11] The

same claim may also be made for metafiction, for reasons which will be made clear shortly. As a result,

while the characteristics defined here as fantastic or metafictional are present in the narration, that text

operates within these respective modes. This distinction between mode and genre is indispensable to anyliterary analysis of the ludic for two reasons. First, fantastic or metafictional elements may be present in a

work without the work as a whole belonging to either genre. Secondly, many modern narratives function

in these two modes simultaneously; to employ the term genre would therefore be as confusing as it would

be incorrect.

Having briefly outlined existing definitions of the fantastic in light of our discussion of the ludic, we

may now define the fantastic as that mode of narration which opposes itself to the literary conventions of realism through the representation of antifactual or impossible events, places or beings juxtaposed against

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an otherwise verisimilar narrative world, thereby inviting readers to enter into an implicit pact with the

text by the suspension of their disbelief. At the same time, the fantastic forces the reader into an active

role: he/she must consider the relationship between what the text presents as “real” and the possibly

supernatural, since this opposition is central to an understanding of the text. The juxtaposition of realistic

and non-realistic narratives possesses the capacity to sensitize readers to the conventional nature of the

former, causing them to question the underlying ideological assumptions of its mimetic strategy.

This reader-text relationship, and the “sensitization” which it produces, are similar to those produced by the metafictional text, although these are made more explicit in the latter. Robert Alter, in his

groundbreaking apologetic study Partial Magic, asserts that metafiction, though not realistic in nature,

constitutes a type of writing which nonetheless dialogues with extratextual realities. He offers the

following definition: “A self -conscious novel, briefly, is a novel that systematically flaunts its owncondition of artifice and that by doing so probes into the problematic relationship between real-seeming

artifice and reality” (x). Robert Scholes agrees with Alter that the explosion of the metafictional novel

reflects Western man‟s changing ontological and epistemological perspectives, and maintains that it

executes the ethical function of a fable in modern culture. Robert Spires elaborates an interesting

synchronic explanation of the workings of self-reflexive literature: “a metafictional mode results when the

member of one world [reader, narrator, or character] violates the world of another” (15). All these

observations describe important aspects of self-reflexive fiction, but perhaps the most illuminating ideas

published in recent years belong to Linda Hutcheon in her excellent study Narcissistic Narrative. It is she

who points out the importance of the reader‟s role implicit in metafictional narrative:

I would say that this „vital link‟ [between life and art] is reforged, on a new level— on that of the

imaginative process (of storytelling), instead of on that of the product (the story told). And it is the

new role of the reader that is the vehicle of this change. (3)

On the one hand, he [the reader] is forced to acknowledge the artifice . . . of what he is reading; on

the other, explicit demands are made upon him, as a co-creator. . . . (7)

Patricia Waugh astutely suggests that metafiction must be considered in terms of its opposition to the

conventions of realism:

Metafictional novels tend to be constructed on the principle of a fundamental and sustained

opposition: the construction of a fictional illusion . . . and the laying bare of that illusion . . . Realism,

often regarded as the classic fictional mode, paradoxically functions by suppressing this dialogue. (6)

The parallel between the metafictional and the fantastic as ludic modes is clear. By definition, thesemodes exist as such through their opposition to the conventions of “serious” realism. They invent their

own set of anticonventions, which the reader is invited to accept. The reader/player then shares the

creative burden of producing meaning from this opposition, a “serious” endeavor which is, paradoxically, playfully undertaken. This increased demand upon the reader is an element built into both modes, and

constitutes one of their determining characteristics. By opposing themselves to the conventions of

“serious” narrative, fantasy and metafiction call the readers attention to these conventions, exposing them

as ideological constructs, inviting readers to examine more closely the relationship between language and

“reality.” This sensitization forms the basis of these modes‟ subversive potential, as it motivates the

reader to question concepts that the “realistic” use of language attempts to reify or naturalize. This

subversiveness constitutes the serious dialogical relationship with extratextual reality suggested above,

which will now be examined more closely.

Susan Suleiman, in an insightful discussion of modernity and the avant-garde, proposes that this

subversive intent is the underlying “meaning” of ludic art: “Might we say that it [the ludicity of modern

art] is the overdetermined coexistence of play as mise en abyme, as an implicit organizing principle, as a

metaphor for writing and living that is specific of modern texts?” (original

emphasis, 4).[12] This hypothesis concerning the relationship of the ludic to man‟s perception of his own

ontological status in the twentieth century is significant, for what Suleiman suggests is that the underlying

purpose and raison d’etre of artistic ludicity is an attempt to subvert the ideologically determined

philosophical presuppositions upon which realistic art is based, and that this art in turn serve to reify:

in the case of the realist novel, the chief expectations that generations of readers have internalized

concern some fundamental notions in our culture . . . the principle of non-contradiction (an event

cannot occur and not occur at the same time), the notions of temporal succession and causality

(events follow each other and are related to each other consequentially), a belief in the solidity of the

phenomenal world (a table is a table is a table), and a belief in at least a relative unity of self (a name

designates a person who has certain fixed characteristics and a set of identifiable ancestors). (originalemphasis, 35)







Fredric Jameson explains how the realist novel or “novel of plot” naturalizes these concepts:

the philosophic efect of the well-made plot . . . is first and foremost to persuade us that such a logic

exists: that events have their own inner meaning along with their own development . . . that humanaction, human life, is somehow a complete, interlocking whole, a single, formed, meaningful

substance. (12)

Ludic narrative does not merely reflect Western culture‟s loss of faith in its fundamental philosophicnotions and its comfortable bourgeois myths, but in its turn may help bring about this loss of faith.

Through its dialectic relationship to “reality,” a relationship in which the reader serves as both mediator

and agent, ludic writing participates in what Barthes calls in another context “a direct subversion of

codes — itself moreover illusory: a code cannot be destroyed, only „played off‟” (“Death of the Author”

144). The ludic “plays off” the serious because, as Robbe-Grillet observes:

What is called serious, what is upheld by values (work, honor, discipline, etc.) belongs . . . to a vast

code, situated and dated, . . . the serious supposes that there is something behind our gestures: a soul,

a god, values, the bourgeois order . . . (qtd. in Suleiman 7)

Ludic writing possesses the potential to subvert “serious,” ideologically determined notions such as

identity, cause and effect, and bourgeois values by opposing itself to the conventions of the realistic art

forms which reify them. The ludic thus subverts not only the notions themselves but the ideologies which

they support. But the breaking of literary conventions itself is not enough to accomplish this subversion,as Rosemary Jackson points out in her discussion of the fantastic: “The presentation of impossibility is

not by itself a radical activity: texts subvert only if the reader is disturbed by their dislocated narrative

form” (original emphasis, 23). I would go further: the ludic text demands and counts on the complicity of

the reader in its subversive project. Ludic narrative modes subvert by reminding us that they consist of

nothing more than language, and that as language their relationship to the concrete realities of daily

existence is conventional, and therefore ideologically determined. Nonetheless, because of their linguistic

existence, these games themselves must operate within the limits that language imposes, limits of

intelligibility which they stretch, challenging readers, making them aware of what is at stake in the game.

It is the reader‟s engagement in the game which makes subversion possible. This explains to a great

extent many readers‟ (and critics‟) discomfort with these narrative modes.

What this strictly heuristic consideration of fantasy and metafiction as ludic modes suggests in terms of critical praxis is the analysis of themes and structures in ludic writing in relation to their ideological

function, the way they reveal what traditional realistic narrative attempts to conceal. Ludic narrative‟ssubversive potential resides in its engagement of the reader, in the way it sensitizes the reader by the

manipulation of his/her expectations. This may prove especially useful in texts where the two modes

coexist. It is hoped that this essay succeeds on offering food for thought to the critic interested in pursuinginvestigations of literature‟s ideological function in culture.

Works cited

Alter, Robert. Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkely: U of California P, 1975.

___. “The Self -Conscious Moment: Reflections on the Aftermath of Modernism.” TriQuarterly 209

(1971): 209-30.

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and the State.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben

Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. 127-88.

Apter, T. E. Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.

Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” The Atlantic Monthly 220 (August 1967): 29-34.

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text . Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New

York: Noonday Press, 1977. 142-48.

___. S/Z . Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.

Bessière, Irène. Le récit fantastique: la poetique de l’incertain. Paris: Larousse, 1974.

Brooke-Rose, Christine. A Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the

Fantastic. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. Trans. Meyer Barash. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.Caillois, Roger. Au coeur du fantastique. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.

Chanady, Amaryll B. Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy. New

York: Garland, 1985.

Christensen, Inger. The Meaning of Metafiction. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1981.

Cornwell, Neil. The Literary Fantastic: From Gothic to Postmodernism. New York:

Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1990.



from distinct periods of time, Jackson employs the term with a Freudian connotation of impulse, of the psychological

need to express one‟s self in a certain manner. [12]The subversive artistic phenomena described by Suleiman, although characteristic of twentieth-century art forms,are certainly not limited to this period. The Quixote could arguably be considered ludic and subversive by her parameters. Critical interpretations of fantastic works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as reactions to

rationalist and positivist ideologies and the technological boom of the industrial revolution also imply the subversive possiblities of the fantastic mode.

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