Contradictions of the Fantastic

Francesco Orlando's posthumous book, Il soprannaturale letterario : storia, logica e forme (2017), introduces new categories to define the ways in which literature has staged implausible events in conflict with the known laws of the universe. The category of the fantastic is thus reduced to smaller dimensions compared to the critical tradition once inaugurated by Roger Caillois. In the last two centuries, it has been surrounded by other modalities. But it nevertheless represents the most violent form of conflict between belief and criticism. There we find the climax of the struggle between the repressive rational agent and the childish irrational agent. From this point of view, the fantastic eminently represents the questioning of rationalism by the romantic culture, in a literary world where the system of genres gave way to the use of genres.