A rhetoric of the unreal : studies in narrative and structure, especially of the fantastic

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A rhetoric of the unreal : studies in narrative and structure, especially of the fantastic

Christine Brooke-Rose

Cambridge University Press, 1981

  • : hard covers

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Note

Bibliography: p. 417-431

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This 1981 book is a study of wide range of fiction, from short stories to tales of horror, from fairy-tales and romances to science fiction, to which the rather loose term 'fantastic' has been applied. Cutting across this wide field, Professor Brooke-Rose examines in a clear and precise way the essential differences between these types of narrative against the background of realistic fiction. In doing so, she employs many of the methods of modern literary theory from Russian formalism to structuralism, while at the same time bringing to these approaches a sharp critical intuition and sound common sense of her own. The range of texts considered is broad: from Poe and James to Tolkien; from Flann O'Brien to the American postmodernism. This book should prove a source of stimulation to all teachers and students of modern literary theory and genre, as well as those interested in 'fantastic' literature.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgements
  • Part I. The Real, the Unreal and the Rhetoric: 1. The real and the unreal
  • 2. The rhetoric
  • Part II. Method and Non-method in Genre Analysis: 3. Historic genres/theoretical genres: Torodov on the fantastic
  • 4. Science fiction and realistic fiction
  • Part III. The Pure Fantastic: Types of Analysis: 5. The encoded reader
  • 6. The Turn of the Screw and its critics: an essay in non-methodology
  • 7. The Turn of the Screw
  • mirror structures as basic structures
  • 8. The surface structures in The Turn of the Screw
  • Part IV. The Unreal as Real: the Modern Marvellous: 9. The evil ring: realism and the marvellous
  • 10. Titan plus: the new science fiction (Vonnegut and McElroy)
  • Part V. The Real as Unreal: Some Modern Texts: 11. The real as unreal: Robbe-Grillet
  • 12. Transgressions
  • 13. Eximplosions
  • 14. Metafiction and surfiction: a simpler formal approach
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

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