A Rhetoric of the Unreal
Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especially of the Fantastic

Cutting across the wide field of 'fantastic' literature, Professor Brooke-Rose examines the essential differences between several 'fantastic' narratives against the background of realistic fiction.

Christine Brooke-Rose (Author)

9780521276566, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 August 1983

456 pages
21.6 x 13.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.545 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]