Estrategias ficcionales de lo insólito: la literatura gótica frente a la literatura fantástica

Abstract

Literary criticism has developed theories on the Fantastic and the Gothic in analogous ways. Critics have found it difficult to describe them as genres, tendencies or modes, and the convergences in their history and evolution have caused a persistent confusion in terminology. Moreover, the analyses on the Fantastic which appeared after Tzvetan Todorov’s Introdution a la literature fantastique (1970), comprised in the works of David Roas, Irène Bressiere, Jaime Alazraki, Juan Herrero Cecilia, and Susana Reisz among others, broadened the concept to the extent that some of the genre’s features coincided with the descriptions formulated by critics of the Gothic, such as David Punter, Maria Beville, Neil Cornwell, and David Miles. My article approaches these theories with the intention of clarifying the concepts of Fantastic and Gothic literature, defending their perpetuation and essential presence in the fiction of many countries since the 18th century. Furthermore, my analysis will put forward a broad concept of “Fantasy” which comprises Fantastic and Gothic literature, Magical Realism, the Marvelous and Science Fiction. These modes will be regarded as equivalent but heterogeneous, dissimilar but interrelated, and will be analyzed both in contraposition and in collaboration.