The Tzvetan Todorov Plot

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Dr. Tzvetan Todorov differentiates between fiction that is fantastic, uncanny, or marvelous.

 

A story is fantastic, he says, if it cannot be resolved as either uncanny or marvelous. For example, at the end of Henry James's novel The Turn of the Screw (1898), it remains unclear whether the ghosts are real or simply products of the governess's hallucinations.

A story is uncanny if its seemingly fantastic incidents can be explained rationally or scientifically. According to this understanding, H. G. Wells's short story “The Red Room” (1894) is uncanny: the ghost that allegedly haunts the castle in which the protagonist has come to spend the night turns out to be the invention of his imagination, an effect of his fear.

A story is marvelous if its incidents cannot be rationally or scientifically explained. Stephen King's short story “1408” (1999) is marvelous, because the ghosts (or demons) that allegedly haunt the hotel room in which the writer spends the night are, in fact, truly supernatural.

Whether intentionally or not, Todorov offers a formula for plotting fantastic, uncanny, or marvelous fiction. It sounds complicated, but it's actually fairly simple. This is how it works:

1. Develop a single situation that can be understood in either natural and or terms or that can be interpreted by reference to the supernatural or faith.
2. During the course of the story, indicate that the situation may be supernatural.
3. Show that the situation actually is supernatural or natural in origin of character or that the situation cannot be resolved in either way.

Fiction provides many models of this approach. Here are a few:

Uncanny:“The Damned Thing” (short story) (1893) by Ambrose Bierce; “The Premature Burial” (short story) by Edgar Allan Poe (1844); A Tough Tussle” (short story) by Ambrose Bierce (1888)

 Marvelous: The Exorcist (novel) (1971) by William Peter Blatty; The Sixth Sense (movie) (1999) directed by M. Night Shyamalan; “Dracula's Guest” (short story) (1914) by Bram Stoker

Fantastic: The Exorcism of Emily Rose (movie) (2005) directed by Scott Derrickson;“The Birds” (short story) (1955) by Daphne du Maurier; Let's Scare Jessica to Death (movie) (1971) directed by John Hancock

By analyzing these stories and others that use the Tzvetan Todorov plot, we can see what specific techniques their writers use to create and sustain the ambiguity that results from the tension between the two opposite interpretations of the stories' incidents, that of the natural and that of the supernatural.

Uncanny: In writing “The Red Room,” Wells withholds the actual (natural) cause of the allegedly supernatural incident (the ghost's haunting of the red room) that the protagonist investigates. By doing so, Wells allows the extinguishing of the candles and the fire in the room's fireplace to seem to be the work of the ghost. His panic causes him to run through the chamber in the dark, seeking escape, which results in his knocking himself unconscious when he collides with a piece of furniture. It is only upon awakening that he realizes that the red room was haunted only by his own fear-fueled imagination.

Marvelous: In The Exorcist, Regan MacNeil's strange behavior causes her mother Chris to seek both medical and psychiatric help for Regan after Chris cannot rationally account for Regan's behavior. Both sciences fail to help Regan, who becomes worse. To help Regan, Chris eventually turns to a priest, Father Damien Karras, despite her own atheism. Through exorcism, at the cost of his own life, Father Karras rids Regan of the demon that possesses her. By postponing the revelation that Regan's apparent demonic possession is, in fact, genuine, Blatty creates and sustains ambiguity as to whether the possession is apparent (the result of a physiological or mental disorder) or real.

Withholding the cause of the seemingly fantastic, as Wells does in “The Red Room,” or showing the failure of both reason and science to account for a seemingly supernatural incident before revealing that the incident actually is fantastic, as Blatty does, introduces the possibility of the fantastic while establishing it as subject to natural or rational interpretation or as genuinely marvelous. 

Other techniques that writers using what is here referred to as the Tzvetan Todorov plot include:

• Swinging back and forth between the natural or scientific explanation of an incident that only at first appears to be marvelous and never explaining the incident's inexplicable mystery (i. e., implying its truly marvelous character).
• Explaining, eventually, that the apparently fantastic incident is the result of a trick; it is a hoax, a prank, or a publicity stunt.
• Explaining, eventually, that the apparently fantastic incident is the enactment of a rite or ritual performed by people who genuinely believe that the act is supernatural.
• Confusing one state of affairs (e. g., a cataleptic trance) with another state of affairs (e. g., death).

Plotting Board

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff. 

The Truth Is in Here

Characters' motives and goals make a simple story meaningful and significant. Make conduct personal to make it momentous.

Sitdrams Work, Too

Some of the subtitles the authors give to the reviews of X-Files episodes they discuss identify each of the episodes' respective situations; rather than being a situation comedy, or sitcom, The X-Files, it seems, is often something of a situational drama, or sitdram, as it were: “Pilot,” “In which Mulder meets Scully”; “Deep Throat:” “In which a massive conspiracy takes shape”; “Fire”: “In which Mulder faces an old flame”; “Young at Heart”: “In which Mulder has to track down an old foe”; “The Calusari”: “In which there are even more evil twins”; “Piper Maru”: “In which we meet some very strange oil”; and plenty of others.

The Connect-the-Dot Plot

Some X-Files episodes offer a series of images connected by their plots: “Pilot” shows disappearances, Handlen observes, “strange happenings in the woods, . . . little bumps on people's skin [and] . . . a weird, inhuman corpse in a coffin” (4). This connect-the-dots approach to plotting maintains mystery and suspense while providing unity and coherence by delaying the revelation or explanation of the cause of the strange events.

Balancing the Marvelous and the Uncanny

As Tzvetan Todorov points out, the fantastic exists only as long as it is not resolved as either natural (scientifically or rationally explainable) or as supernatural (scientifically or rationally inexplicable). In the former case, the apparently fantastic is uncanny; in the latter, it's marvelous.

Like most other fantastic fiction, The X-Files balances the marvelous and the uncanny, allowing a series of events to be explicable or not, depending upon one's perspective: For Mulder, science or reason can explain little, if any, of the bizarre incidents he observes, while, for Scully, almost everything she witnesses (including most of what Mulder sees) can be explained by science or reason.

For example, as Todd VanDerWerff explains, there is, in episode two of season one, “a spirited argument about whether the phenomenon the two [Mulder and Scully] observed has a paranormal or a scientific explanation” (11). The same is true, pretty much, throughout the series.

Plot Generators

The X-Files uses two plot generators to keep the action coming, episode after episode, week in and week out: “mythology” and the Monster of the Week (MOTW): “The first two episodes of the first season introduced some of the ideas that would power the mythology,” such as “alien abductions, UFO sightings, government conspiracies, and secrets,” while the MOTW provided variety, preventing the series from rehashing these elements and becoming boring an “repetitive” as a result.

As Handlen explains, “The genius of The X-Files as a premise lies in its infinite potential. Centering the show around a department of the FBI devoted exclusively to investigating strange or inexplicable cases means The X-Files can encompass any number of urban legends [and] can cross between science fiction, fantasy, and horror with ease” (11-12). (Later, to this list, the authors add “weird science” and “dramatic stories” of “the personal lives of Mulder and Scully” (14), the latter of which approach sometimes gives the series a soap opera-like character.

MORE next post!

Techniques of Terror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Judging by the quality, rather than by the quantity, of one's work, Edgar Allan Poe is probably the greatest writer of horror fiction ever to live. (I make the distinction because some Internet polls give first place to Stephen King, who, in his early novels, did sometimes tell amazingly good—and chilling—stories, but who has since declined sharply, his fiction often offering little more than personal invective and political pontification. These polls' first-place awards to King seem to be based on the volume of his output, which is admittedly vast, rather than on its quantity, which is mediocre at best. King himself admits that his style is the “literary equivalent of a Bic Mac and fries.”)

As the foremost writer of horror fiction, Poe exhibits several techniques of terror from which we can learn. In The Annotated Poe, editor Kevin J. Hayes points out several.

In an earlier post, “Writing Dramatic Scenes,” we saw how Poe's descriptions anticipated filmmaking techniques, well in advance of Hollywood studios' use of them. Hayes cites a paragraph in “Metzengerstein” as an example:

The career of the horseman was, indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggling of his frame gave no evidence of superhuman exertion; nut no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through, in the intensity of terror (The Annotated Poe, 34).

As Hayes notes:

The cinema has much to offer when it comes to understanding Poe, partly because his work has contributed so much to its development. The great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein found that Poe's writing anticipated visual techniques that would not be fully utilized until the invention of motion pictures. This paragraph provides a good example. Poe depicts Metzengerstein in close-up (the “agony of his convulsions”), pulls back to show him from a distance (“the convulsive struggling of his frame”), and then supplies an extreme close-up (“his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through”). The rapid shifting of images quickens the narrative pace, which the ensuing cacophony of sound—the shriek of Metzengerstein, the clatter of hoofs, the roar of the flames, and the shriek of the wind—further intensifies, thus providing a narrative running start for the horse's final bound up the staircase (The Annotated Poe, 34).

In Introduction a la litterature fantastique (1970), Tzvetan Todorov distinguishes between the “uncanny” and the “marvelous.” That which is presented in certain types of literature, including the horror genre, as fantastic, Todorov says, is usually resolved as being either uncanny (susceptible to explanation via scientific knowledge or natural law) or marvelous (inexplicable via scientific knowledge or natural law). Only that which remains ambiguous at the conclusion of such stories retains its fantastic character. In “Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” Poe sets up a similar “dynamic between the narrator's love of scientific explanation and the supernatural events of the story” by the way Poe describes the story's narrator; as Hayes points out, the narrator, is “a man who has 'a strong relish for physical philosophy'” (37). The narrator's description of the particulars of material objects, such as the ship upon which he embarks as a passenger (“a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak”) also shows the narrator's character as “a man who has 'a strong relish for physical philosophy'” (37). According to Hayes, “Poe has learned well the need, in a fantastic adventure tale, of a credible witness” (38).

Poe's use of blanks in dates, “18—“ in “Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” for example, was not new with Poe. It was an established convention, Hayes says. Used to enhance “mystery” by implying that the story being told is based on “a true story whose details have been deliberately withheld to protect those involved” (37). The device is similar to the notification, at the beginning of a movie—and often a seemingly fantastic film, at that—that the picture is “based on a true story.”

Such a statement may make the dubious incidents seem more believable, despite the fact that movies “based on a true story” often depart substantially from the facts of the “true story” itself. (For example, Backcountry is “based on a true story,” but the roles of female victim and the male survivor are changed, among other alterations of the facts, with the male being killed and the female escaping in the movie version. Likewise, in The Exorcist, the possessed person is a girl, whereas, in the “true story” upon which the film is based, this individual is a boy. Examples of such changes could be multiplied extensively.)

Poe employs the juxtaposition of contrasts to heighten horror, as when he alternates between “static and dynamic imagery” in describing, in “Metzengerstein,” the appearance of “a gigantic ship” at sea (42):

At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship . . . . What mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up under a press of [an unfurled] sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows alone were to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon that giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered and—came down.

Poe's shift of tense in the same story indicates a compression of “space, time, and information,” that, anticipating “the technique of a cinematic montage,” increases the story's pace, “propelling readers toward its climax” (Hayes, 43).

Through description, Poe suggests similarities, both superficial and significant, between his characters. As Hayes notes, “Making narrator and captain the same height (5'8”), Poe draws the reader's attention to a deeper resemblance between the two men. Both are men of science,” or, rather scientism, “relying too heavily on science to explain everything.” (46).

Even cliches are used for effect in Poe's story, characterizing his characters: “The 'eagerness of hope' and 'the apathy of despair' are cliched proverbial phrases. The narrator's growing reliance on stock phrases suggests he is lost for words as he approaches the unknown” (Hayes, 48).

Poe uses the dialogue that a particular character uses, including his or her choice of words, as a way to suggest subtle motivations for their behavior. In “Ligeia,” the narrator's “mellifluous word pairs—a”thrilling and enthralling,” “steadily and stealthily,” “unnoticed and unknown”—reveal a narrator deliberately shaping personal experience into ornate literary prose,” Dorothea E. von Mucke contends (Hayes, 66).

Poe also enriches the possible implications and meanings of his tales with frequent allusions, mostly to the Bible, to classical mythology, to history, and to literature, but he also refers to folklore, legends, and occult systems of belief. These allusions make his stories seem predicated upon ancient knowledge or traditions, associate them with existing worldviews or metaphysical themes, and suggest his own work is, at times, commentaries or innovative adaptations or extensions of these previous materials.

In summary, Poe uses a number of techniques, the chief among which is description, to accomplish a variety of narrative effects. These techniques include those which anticipate cinematic techniques yet to be developed, dates deliberately left incomplete, descriptive characterization (i. e., characterization via description), juxtapositions of contrasts, deliberate shifts of tense, descriptive motivation (i. e., implication of motive via description), the deliberate use of cliches to characterize characters, and various allusions.

Note: Poe's use of additional techniques of terror may be considered in a future post or two.

Breasts as Emblems of Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Bare breasts are big in horror movies, which begs the question: what's so horrific about mammary glands? 

Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) devotes several pages to listing “Most Popular 'female-frontal-nudity,' Horror Feature Films.” There are a lot of them on the list: 665, in fact, to date. Perhaps these films may indicate why filmmakers consider women's breasts terrifying enough to feature prominently in the movies they make, if the exhibition of breasts is not merely gratuitous—in other words, presented only to sell tickets.

In TheShining, Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer who is earning money by taking care of a vast hotel that's closed for the off-season, sees a naked succubus. The female sex demon appears to be a beautiful young woman, but she soon reveals her true self, taking on her actual appearance as a withered old crone. Is Jack hallucinating, or has the succubus actually transformed, shedding her youth and beauty? Does her change in appearance have a psychological or a supernatural cause? In the words of Tzvetan Todorov, is she, respectively, a specimen of the uncanny or the marvelous?

In a sense, the succubus embodies the crux of the matter investigated by Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's novel. The producer believed in the possibility of the survival of death. His succubus suggests this state of existence in the presence of the sex demon. However, Kubrick leaves room for a psychological explanation of the female sex demon: maybe Jack is psychotic and she's merely an hallucination. Since the succubus can be understood in either natural or supernatural terms, depending on one's world view, her presence in the film is not gratuitous, but symbolic and thematic.

But what about her nudity? Must she be naked? Again, the answer to this question will be determined by the individual viewer's view of the nature of ultimate reality. If she is regarded as being of a supernatural origin, her nudity is not gratuitous, for it accords with the legend of the succubus, a female sex demon who invariably appears in the altogether as a temptress intent upon collecting human semen. Once successful, according to some stories, she assumes the form of a male sex demon, the incubus, appearing to women, usually during their sleep, to seduce and inseminate them—with the demon (or female sex demon) collected from human males in his (or her) previous incarnations as a succubus. (Demon sex is more complicated than we might have imagined.)

If she is a succubus, though, it is difficult to imagine why she gives herself away by transforming her appearance as a beautiful young woman into a shape that's not merely undesirable, but repulsive. As a succubus, she would be intent upon collecting Jack's seed in order to inseminate a woman. Assuming the appearance of someone who's undesirable doesn't help her to achieve her goals.

Perhaps, then, the succubus isn't a sex female demon, after all, except in Jack's own tormented mind. She is his version of a succubus, a demonic Galatea fashioned in his own image of a desirable woman. As such, she is far from the reality of womanhood embodied by his wife, Wendy, who is portrayed by Shelley Duvall, the same actress who played Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams's Popeye. Wendy is not undesirable as a woman—Jack married her and fathered a son by her, after all—but, in Jack's twisted mind, if the succubus is a hallucination, Wendy (and all women) becomes so: her transformation isn't real, but a projection of Jack's own thoughts about women, Wendy, perhaps, in particular. Seductive one moment, women can transform themselves (or be transformed by Jack's fears of women) into repulsive monsters—or female sex demon—the next instant. Woman, Jack's ambiguous thoughts about the opposite sex seem to suggest, thy name is mutability.

The scene in which the succubus makes her appearance suggests Jack's ambiguity concerning women, female nudity, and sex. His hand appears from the left, as he slowly opens a bathroom door. The slowness with which Jack opens the door highlights the moment, dramatizing the revelation that is now at hand. This slow movement, like the lighting during the first half of the scene, gives an ethereal quality to the picture, emphasizing the ideal way in which Jack views the nubile young woman.

As the door opens, Jack sees a bathtub and a half-drawn shower curtain. The tub occupies an arched niche at the rear of the bathroom, which, with the shower curtain, gives the alcove the appearance of being a theater, if not, indeed, an altar. Jack has entered a forbidden (or sacred) zone, symbolized by the closed, if not locked, door. He is about to see something half-hidden from his consciousness, as the half-drawn shower curtain suggests. His staring eyes and a close-up shot of his throat as he gulps, his Adam's apple rising and falling, shows his anxiety. The half-drawn shower curtain opens, as a beautiful young nude woman draws it aside. She is wet (with Freudian significance and otherwise), as her breasts are revealed. Again, the slowness with which the curtain is drawn aside focuses viewers on the revelatory aspect of the moment.

Jack's expression changes from one of anxiety to one of enchanted. He smiles, Slowly, the woman rises. Jack's look of enchantment. changes to one of lust, as his gaze intensifies, Slowly, the woman steps out of the tub, one long leg advancing, the other, just as slowly, following. Jack's gaze is riveted. His smile broadens. The seductive woman advances, her gait slow, measured, as if she is walking in tandem with the wedding march. Her gaze is locked on Jack. Returning her stare, he seems transfixed, but then he walks, slowly, to meet her, as the camera turns slightly to view her from a three-quarters angle. Her breasts and pubes seem to fill the screen, as they do Jack's consciousness.

As they face one another, staring into one another's eyes, the woman's fingertips make contact with Jack's abdomen, gliding upward, across his chest. Her movement, as has been typical throughout the scene, is slow and deliberate. Her hands continue to glide, over Jack's shoulders and around his neck. He has not moved, but stands as if he were a statue. Then, he responds, encircling her waist with his hand. She turns this way and that, offering viewers a glimpse of her buttocks, before she kisses Jack, who now fully embraces her. Jack's eyes close. Theirs is a long kiss, an extended kiss, a passionate kiss.

Jack opens his eyes. They widen, as he sees something over her shoulder. The camera shares his view, in a mirror on the wall behind him: the body of the woman he holds in his arms, as revealed in the looking-glass, is scarred. Her upper left arm, her lower back, and her right buttock are marred by massive discolorations and hideous blemishes. Astonished and horrified, Jack begins to back away from the transformed woman.

For a moment, his shaken son Danny's discovery of a dead older woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, scabrous discolorations and blotches on her body, is interspersed.

Jack continues to retreat, his head shaking, just as Danny's head shook when he saw the drowned, older woman's corpse. As he backs through the doorway, the portal of revelation, the hideous crone follows, her arms parted, as if to embrace Jack.

The scene is interrupted again by Danny's sight of the drowned woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, her body displaying terrible scars and bruises.

Jack retreats down the steps, into the suite's living room, followed by the succubus.

Danny trembles, uncontrollably, as the dead woman's body sits up.

Outside the suite, Jack locks the door to the rooms, leaving the key in the lock, as he staggers backwards, down the hall, away from the rooms,leaving the scene of the revelation behind.

It seems apparent that the nude woman whom Jack encountered is the same one Danny encountered, but Jack saw the woman in her beautiful and desirable guise, whereas Danny saw her as an apparition of a drowned, older woman. For Jack, the woman was a female demon; for Danny, a ghost. Danny is too young to conceptualize women sexually; Jack is not. Therein lies the differences in their conscious understanding and their unconscious depictions of the opposite sex. Danny can see a woman in her physical aspect as a body which, despite the presence of breasts and genitalia, is primarily, or even exclusively, merely anatomical. Jack can see a woman as both physical and sexual, and it is to the latter image that he is anxious, while, at the same time, himself sexually responsive.

Essentially, Danny is frightened of death, a it is represented by the female corpse he encounters, whereas Jack is terrified of something other than death. Jack is horrified by female sexuality itself, which is alive with beauty and sex appeal, but, at the same time, diseased and repulsive because capable of transforming in various ways. A woman can become pregnant, deliver a baby, suckle an infant, and age. She seems to be in transition, as she undergoes transformations throughout her life. She is manifold in function and in appearance, seemingly unstable and mutable—in a word, from Jack's point of view, monstrous and demonic.

His encounter with the beautiful nude young woman shows Jack's feelings about women as desirable, but his attraction to them, as they are represented in particular by his wife Wendy, is contradicted by his revulsion of them. He seems to think that, beneath their apparent glamour, they are diseased and hideous.

The sexist dichotomy of women which separates them into virtuous and charming companions versus untrustworthy sluts is alive and well in Jack's subconscious mind. In the hotel, whether through supernatural or psychological influences, this unconscious view of women become conscious, at least until the locks the succubus in the hotel suite (his unconscious mind) by repressing the knowledge, which he finds too threatening to embrace, or accept. Therefore, his view of women, and of Wendy in particular, remains dualistic. At the same time, he sees them as beautiful and desirable, seductive temptresses and as hideous and unwelcome, destructive female sex demons.

In The Shining, as symbols of femininity, of female sexuality, of pregnancy, and of motherhood, breasts, as synecdoches of womanhood, are horrific for Jack because he is unable to come to terms with women as they are in themselves. Women are too complex for him, too changeable, too mysterious, too other. He can conceive of them only as beautiful seductresses or as monstrous female sex demons. Despite his marriage to Wendy, he is unable to view women, including his wife, as they are in and of themselves, as human beings, complex and, yes, in the final analysis, mysterious, as all life is ultimately mysterious.

For viewers, watching the movie through more objective eyes, Jack's behavior, stemming, as it does from his beliefs, is insane. However, from his own point of view, his delusions and hallucinations are real. From his perspective, he sees things as they are. When he acts upon his own understanding of reality, horror results. It is this horror, resulting from his monstrous ideas of women, his wife included, that the true horror of Kubrick's film arises.

Of course, plenty of other horror movies feature breasts as symbols of the particular horrors with which they are concerned. While such horror, in general, centers upon women, who sport these accouterments of femininity, the precise sorts of horror that breasts, as synecdoches of the physicality and sexuality of women, represent for other characters, in other movies, differ, because every man—and some women—are Pygmalions who fashion their ideas of women into psychological and, sometimes theological, representations of women. When those concepts of womanhood are irrational, horror can, and, unfortunately, often does, result. Future essays will consider the additional ways in which, in such movies, breasts are emblems of horror.

Guest Speaker: Tzvetan Todorov

The following are excerpt from Todorov's "The Uncanny and the Marvelous":

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the work belongs to another genre [than that of the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (Tzvetan Todorov, “The Uncanny and the Marvelous” in Literature of the Occult: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Peter B. Messent. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981. 17. Print).

Indeed, we generally distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”). . . and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”) (Todorov, 17). [By definition, Todorov views “the novels of Clara Reeves and Ann Radcliffe” as uncanny, but sees “the works of Horace Walpole, M. G. Lewis, and Maturin” as marvelous.]

. . . The marvelous corresponds to an unknown phenomenon, never seen as yet, still to come--hence to a future; in the uncanny, on the other hand, we refer the inexplicable to known facts, to a previous experience, and thereby to the past. As for the fantastic itself, the hesitation which characterizes it cannot be situated, by and large, except in the present (Todorov, 18).

Yet it would be wrong to claim that the fantastic can exist only in part of a work, for here are certain texts which sustain their ambiguity to the very end, i. e., even beyond the narrative itself. The book closed, the ambiguity persists. A remarkable example is supplied by Henry James’ tale “The Turn of the Screw,” which does not permit us to determine finally whether ghosts haunt the old estate, or whether we are confronted by hallucinations or a hysterical governess victimized by the disturbing atmosphere which surrounds her. In French literature, Merimee’s tale “La Venus d’Ille” affords a perfect example of this ambiguity. A statue seems to come alive and to kill the bridegroom; but we remain at the point of “seems,” and never reach certainty (Todorov, 19).

We find that. . . a transitory sub-genre appears: between the fantastic and the uncanny on the one hand, between the fantastic and the marvelous on the other[:]

. . . In. . . [the]. . . sub-genre [of the fantastic-uncanny] events that seem supernatural throughout a story receive a rational explanation at its end. . . . Criticism has described, and often condemned, this type under the label of “the supernatural explained” (Todorov, 20). [An example of the fantastic-uncanny sub-genre is The Saragossa Manuscript, in which the possibility of the supernatural as a cause of the events is slowly and continuously “eroded” in various ways, to wit:] first, accident or coincidence. . . ; next, dreams. . . ; then the influence of drugs. . . ; tricks and prearranged apparitions. . . ; illusion of the senses. . . ; and lastly madness (Todorov, 20-21).

. . . Indeed, the realistic solutions given in The Saragossa Manuscript or “Ines de las Sierras” are altogether improbable; supernatural solutions would have been, on the contrary, quite probable. . . . The probable is therefore not necessarily opposed to the fantastic: the former is a category that deals with internal coherence, with submission to the genre; the fantastic refers to an ambiguous perception shared by the reader and one of the characters. Within the genre of the fantastic, it is probable that “fantastic” reactions will occur (Todorov, 21).

. . . There also exists the uncanny in the pure state. In works that belong to this genre, events are related which may be readily accounted for by the laws of reason, but which are, in one way or another, incredible, extraordinary or unexpected, and which thereby provoke in the character and in the reader a reaction similar to that which works of the fantastic have made familiar. . . . The literature of horror in its pure state belongs to the uncanny--many examples from the stories of Ambrose Bierce could serve as examples here (Todorov, 22-23).

The uncanny realizes. . . only one of the conditions of the fantastic: the description of certain reactions, especially of fear. It is uniquely linked to the sentiments of the characters and not to a material event defying reason. (The marvelous, by way of contrast, may be characterized by the mere presence of supernatural events, without implicating the reaction they provoke in the characters) (Todorov, 22).

Poe’s tale “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an instance of the uncanny bordering on the fantastic (Todorov, 22).

Here [in “The Fall of the House of Usher”] the uncanny has two sources. The first is constituted by two coincidences (there are as many of these as in a work of the supernatural explained). Although the resurrection of Usher’s sister and the fall of the house after the death of the inhabitants may appear supernatural, Poe has not failed to supply quite rational explanations for both events [a fissure in the edifice and catalepsy, respectively] (Todorov, 23).

The other series of elements that provoke the sense of the uncanny is not linked to the fantastic but to what we might call “an experience of limits,” which characterizes the whole of Poe’s oeuvre. . . . In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it is the extremely morbid condition of the brother and sister which disturbs the reader. In other tales, scenes of cruelty, delight in evil, and murder will provoke the same effect. The sentiment of the uncanny originates, then, in certain themes linked to more or less ancient taboos. If we grant that primeval experience is constituted by transgression, we can accept Freud’s theory as to the origin of the uncanny [as representing a resurfacing, or return, of the suppressed] (Todorov, 23).

Thus the fantastic is ultimately excluded from “The Fall of the House of Usher.” As a rule we do not find the fantastic in Poe’s works, in the strict sense, with the exception perhaps of “The Black Cat.” His tales almost all derive their effects from the uncanny, and several from the marvelous. Yet Poe remains very close to the authors of the fantastic both in his themes and in the techniques that he applies (Todorov, 29).

. . . It has often been remarked. . . that for the reading public, detective stories have in our time replaced ghost stories. Let us consider the nature of the relationship. The murder mystery, in which we try to discover the identity of the criminal, is constructed in the following manner: on the one hand there are several easy solutions, initially tempting but turning out, one after another, to be false; on the other, there is an entirely improbable solution disclosed only at the end and turning out to be the only right one. Here we see what brings the detective story close to the fantastic tale. . . . The fantastic narrative, too, involves two solutions, one probable and supernatural, the other improbable and rational.

It suffices, therefore, that in the detective story this second solution be so inaccessible as to “defy reason” for us to accept the existence of the supernatural rather than to rest with the absence of any explanation at all. A classic example of this situation is Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. [However, the detective story is an example of the uncanny, for] the detective story, once it is over, leaves no doubt as to the absence of supernatural events. The relationship, moreover, is valid only for a certain type of detective story (the “sealed room”) and a certain type of uncanny narrative (the ‘supernatural explained”). Further, the emphasis differs in the two genres: in the detective story, the emphasis is placed on the solution to the mystery; in the texts linked to the uncanny (as in the fantastic narrative), the emphasis is on the reactions which this mystery provokes (Todorov, 24).

. . . As a result of [the epilogue to John Dickson Carr’s detective novel] . . . The Burning Court [the novel] emerges from the class of detective stories that simply evoke the supernatural, to join the ranks of the fantastic. We see Marie once again, in her house, thinking over the case; and the fantastic re-emerges. Marie asserts once again (to the reader) that she is indeed the poisoner, that the detective was her in fact her friend (which is not untrue), and that he has provided the entire rational explanation in order to save her. . . (Todorov, 25-26).

[In The Burning Court] the world of the non-dead reclaims its rights, and the fantastic with it: we are thrown back on our hesitation as to which solution to choose. . . (Todorov, 26).

If we move to the other side of that median line we have called the fantastic, we find ourselves in the fantastic-marvelous, the class of narrative that are separated as fantastic and that end with an acceptance of the supernatural (Todorov, 26).

Gautier’ “La Morte Amoureuse” can serve as an example [of the fantastic-marvelous] (Todorov, 26).

A similar example is to be found in Villiers de I’Isle-Adam’s “Vera.” Here again, throughout the tale, we may hesitate between believing in life-after-death or thinking that the count who so believes is mad. But at the end, the count discovers the key to Vera’s tomb, though he himself had flung it into the tomb; it must therefore be Vera, his dead wife, who has brought it to him (Todorov, 27).

There exists, finally, a form of the marvelous in the pure state. . . . It is not an attitude [on the part of either reader or character] toward the events described which characterizes the marvelous, but the nature of these events (28).

We generally link the genre of the marvelous to that of the fairy tale. But as a matter of fact, the fairy tale is only one of the varieties of the marvelous, and the supernatural events in fairy tales provoke no surprise. . . . What distinguishes the fairy tale is a certain kind of writing, not the status of the supernatural. Hoffman’s tales illustrate this difference perfectly: “The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King,” “The Strange Child,” and “The King’s Bride” belong, by stylistic properties, to the fairy tale. “The Choice of the Bride,” while preserving the same status with respect to the supernatural, is not a fairy tale at all. One would also have to characterize the Arabian Nights as marvelous tales rather than fairy tales. . . (Todorov, 28).

In order to delimit the marvelous in the pure state, it is convenient to isolate it from several types of narrative in which the supernatural is somewhat justified (Todorov, 28).

1. We may speak first of all of hyperbolic marvelous. In it, phenomena are supernatural only by virtue of their dimensions, which are superior to those that are familiar to us. Thus in the Arabian Nights Sinbad the Sailor declares he has seen “fish one hundred and even two hundred ells long” or “serpents so great and so long that there is not one which could not have swallowed an elephant” (Todorov, 28).

2. Quite close to this first type of the marvelous is the exotic marvelous. In this type, supernatural events are reported without being presented as such. The implicit reader is supposed to be ignorant of the regions where the events take place, and consequently he has no reason for calling them into question. Sinbad’s second voyage furnishes some excellent examples, such as the roc, a bird so tremendous that it concealed the sun and “one of whose legs. . . was as great as a great tree-trunk” (Todorov, 29).

3. A third type of the marvelous might be called the instrumental marvelous. Here we find the gadgets, technological developments unrealized in the period described but, after all, quite possible. In the “The Tale of Prince Ahmed” in the Arabian Nights, for instance, the marvelous instruments are, at the beginning: a flying carpet, an apple that cures diseases, and a “pipe” for seeing great distances; today, the helicopter, antibiotics, and binoculars, endowed with the same qualities, do not belong in any way to the marvelous (Todorov, 29).

4. The “instrumental marvelous” brings us very close to what in nineteenth-century France was called the scientific marvelous, which today we call science fiction. Here the supernatural is explained in a rational manner, but according to laws [of nature or science] that contemporary science does not acknowledge. In the high period of fantastic narratives, stories involving magnetism are characteristic of the scientific marvelous: magnetism “scientifically” explains supernatural events, yet magnetism itself belongs to the supernatural. Examples are Hoffman’s “Spectre Bridegroom” or “The Magnetizer,” and Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” or Maupassant’s “Un Fou?” Contemporary science fiction. When it does not slip into allegory, obeys the same mechanism: these narratives, starting from irrational premises, link the “facts” they contain in a perfectly logical manner (Todorov, 30).

[Todorov’s essay does not “consider” the marvelous itself, finding the marvelous to be “an anthropological phenomenon” that “:exceeds the context of a study limited to literary aspects” (30).]

Implications of the Fantastic

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation. . . [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the works belong to another genre; the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (41).

Indeed we distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”). . . and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”) (41-42).

-- Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre

Whatever one may think about Todorov’s theory of the fantastic, he or she would likely admit that the philosopher does a good job, for the most part, in defining his terms. The fantastic is either the supernatural or the apparently supernatural, depending upon whether it is resolved as explicable in terms of “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion” (that is, as the “uncanny,” or “supernatural explained”) or it remains inexplicable (that is, “marvelous”).

One of the terms that is not as explicitly defined is “‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion.” This term is more vague, although, within the context of the other terms’ definitions, its meaning is fairly clear, referring, it seems, to the scientific world view in which the universe is synonymous with nature, cause-and-effect relationships govern all events, knowledge is obtained through the application of the scientific method, and the results of this method of inquiry are codified in theoretical principles often called “laws of nature,” “laws of thermodynamics,” “laws of physics,” and so forth. It is “reality” in this sense upon which the fantastic itself is predicated, Todorov says, and which the fantastic actually supports:

The reader and the hero, as we have seen, must decide if a certain event or phenomenon belongs to reality or the imagination, that is, must determine whether or not it is real. It is therefore the category of the real which has furnished a basis for our definition of the fantastic.

. . . Far from being a praise of the imaginary. . . the literature of the fantastic posits the majority of a text as belonging to reality--or, more specifically, as provoked by reality (167-168).

It is also for this reason that the literature of the fantastic ultimately reaches its end, or, as Todorov declares:

Today, we can no longer believe in an immutable, external reality, nor in a literature which is merely the transcription of such a reality. . . . Fantastic literature itself--which on every page subverts linguistic categorizations--has received a fatal blow from these very categorizations (168).

In short, as I myself suggest in “Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?”:

The prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

 However, in general, individuals follow, rather than lead, developments in cultural and theoretical paradigm shifts. The cultural Weltanschauung changes, usually centuries before, the individual’s world view, and what is accepted among the elite of specialized communities such as those of academics, scientists, and philosophers usually becomes accepted much more slowly, often centuries later, in fact, if ever, by the general public. For this reason, outmoded views of the “reality” of which Todorov speaks continue to inform and to direct, if not determine, their thoughts, behavior, and, to a lesser degree, perhaps, their feelings. For them, such divisions as those listed below will continue, more or less, to hold sway:

The Fantastic (or what might be called the “supernatural undecided”): The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Shining (film version; directed by Stanley Kubrick), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King), The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson). 

The Uncanny (“supernatural explained”): “The Red Room” (H. G. Wells), The Island of Dr. Moreau (H. G. Wells), The Food of the Gods (H. G. Wells), The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells), Hide and Seek (film, directed by Ari Schlossberg), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), King Kong (film, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack), Subterranean (James Rollins), Relic (Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child), Watchers (Dean Koontz), The Tommyknockers (Stephen King), Swan Song (Robert McCammon), The Funhouse (film, directed by Tobe Hooper). 

The Marvelous ("supernatural accepted" as such): “1408” (Stephen King), “Dracula’s Guest” (Bram Stoker), “A Christmas Carol” (Charles Dickens), It (Stephen King), ‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King), Carrie (Stephen King), Desperation (Stephen King), The Taking (Dean Koontz), Summer of Night (Dan Simmons), Fires of Eden (Dan Simmons), The Green Mile (Stephen King), Silver Bullet (Stephen King), The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty), Dracula (Bram Stoker), The University (Bentley Little).

Such a division also has the benefit of allowing authors, critics, and readers the ability to discern, in short order, whether a writer’s oeuvre tends more toward the fantastic, the uncanny, or the marvelous.