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Issues in Fantastic Literature

The purpose of this research is to examine problematic issues in fantastic literature of Honore de Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Washington Irving, Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka, and H.P. Lovecraft. The plan of the research will be to set forth how each writer spins tales around the confrontation of the natural with the supernatural world, and to discuss ways in which their stories anchored in fantasy carry themes of realworld concerns. It is, indeed, on the level of morality and metaphysics that the juxtaposition of the world of reality and the world of fantasy can be viewed. By and large, writers who build a story around realworld characters who encounter or challenge the world of the unknown are not so much seeking to compare one world to another but to say something about the appropriate place of man in the universe, which may be natural or supernatural or both.

The fantasy tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann have been cited as precursors of modern science fiction and fantasy tales. But elements of metaphysical reality as well as "extra"physical reality are present in his stories. Nicholls says that Hoffmann's stories "express a grotesque Romanticism more effectively than those of any other writer of his time [early nineteenth century]." In particular, Nicholls cites "The Sandman" as "an important forerunner of robot and android stories."1 In such stories, the world of fantasy achieves the status of reality, and this explains why Lange says that in Hoffmann's stories, "the pragmatic and the ideal remain . . . radically separate. They are not harmonized in optimistic or utopian schemes; their inexorable confrontation, to the point of improbable exaggeration, is the pervasive tenor of his writing."2 To put it another way, the reader is drawn immediately into the fantasy and experiences, on one hand, a new world along with the characters as the story unfolds. On the other hand, the reader may experience the ordinary world anew.

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Issues in Fantastic Literature. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:23, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702918.html