Ever since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Cuba has witnessed an unprecedented productive boom in the genres of science fiction and the fantastic. A large number of the literary and cinematic works that have surfaced during the last half-century attempt to replace and ultimately reify motifs and scenarios appropriated from the various science fiction and fantastic narratives in world literature and have generated alternative or imagined settings that challenge extant sociopolitical realities and certainties of the island. My dissertation, “Cuba i+Real: singularidades de lo fantástico y la ciencia ficción en la Cuba contemporánea”, examines these literary texts in a Post-Soviet context, analyzing the ways they reimagine the themes, plot devices, and scenarios traditional to the different genres. My argument is that, in most cases, the narratives are carefully and intentionally transformed, adapting them to the strenuous political and economic circumstances of the island and to the tense social conditions of the post-Soviet era. My thesis both decentralizes and expands contemporary debates about fantastic and science fiction theories by recognizing—and including—Cuban science fiction and fantastic production within broader conversations about the relationship between science fiction, the fantastic, and politics. My dissertation builds and expands upon the contemporary currents in literature, exploring how Cuban science fiction and fantastic texts provide a new, imaginative space and frontier to interrupt and contest the Cuban Revolution's hegemonic and monolithic discursive arcs, while allowing for a unique transnational corpus formation which not only crosses many generic and formal boundaries, but also evades and goes beyond existing theoretical and thematic paradigms.

The Roman de Thèbes and Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide are romances of an Anglo-Norman tradition, which were crafted during the second half of the 12th-century. The Roman de Thèbes, most probably created during the 1150s, is an anonymous reworking of Statius' first-century Thebaïd and relates the story of the battle between Greeks and Thebans, which breaks out because Oedipus' sons fight over their inherited lands. Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, an Arthurian romance, was created in ca. 1170 and culminates with the coronation of Erec as the new king of his lands. Both of these texts therefore deal with questions of land inheritance and were, very significantly, written during important stages in Henry II's career, as it was during this time frame that Henry II (1133-1189) gained dominance in the British Isles as well as in western continental Europe. My thesis will discuss these works separately, devoting the subsequent section to the ekphrastic accounts featured in the Roman de Thèbes. This chapter will focus on mappa mundi and Amphiareus' chariot and will discuss how these moments mirror the ambitions of Henry II during the early stages of his reign. Moreover, the penultimate section will then move on to discuss the coronation scene featured in Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, with a special emphasis on Erec's robe. This discussion will also examine how this scene mirrors the historical occurrences in of the late 1160s, during which time Henry tried to establish his authority in Brittanny. Ultimately, I will attempt to weave these moments together to provide a comprehensive reading of these ekphrastic accounts.

ABSTRACT “Theories of the Fantastic: Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Modern Physics” Karen Pike Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (2010) Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto This dissertation examines the fantastic mode of narrative as it appears in postmodern texts in a variety of media including literature, television, and film. By analyzing the kinds of changes which the fantastic mode has undergone in order to accommodate postmodern concerns, this project attempts to answer both how and why the fantastic has maintained its popularity and effectiveness. The first chapter seeks to define the fantastic mode by tracing the history of its definition from the early twentieth century up until the present. In doing so, it revisits the contributions of such analysts as Vax, Caillois, Todorov, and Freud. The second chapter discusses the changes to conventions demanded by postmodern discursive strategies, many of which include a back-and-forth movement between equally valid interpretations of the text. A discussion of Armin Ayren’s “Der Brandstifter,” a comparison of a recurring X-Files sub-plot to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and an analysis of an intentionally self-reflexive episode of The X-Files demonstrate these changes. The third chapter introduces game theory as a way of understanding the back-and-forth movement typical of the fantastic mode. Hanns Heinz Ewers’s “Die Spinne” is used to illustrate the psychoanalytical aspect of this movement. The next chapter compares and contrasts three vampire films, The Addiction, Lair of the White Worm, and Nadja, in order to demonstrate how the degree to which this back-and-forth movement is present is an indicator of how successfully the fantastic effect emerges. The fifth chapter introduces modern physics as another mode for understanding the presence of the fantastic mode in the postmodern era. The analysis of House of Leaves in the final chapter illustrates how postmodern theory, game theory, and physics all work together to explain the fantastic’s effectiveness. This dissertation’s aim is to explain how and why a mode once defined as a specific nineteenth-century phenomenon keeps reinventing itself and re-emerging to continue to frighten and entertain us.

ABSTRACT “Theories of the Fantastic: Postmodernism, Game Theory, and Modern Physics” Karen Pike Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (2010) Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto This dissertation examines the fantastic mode of narrative as it appears in postmodern texts in a variety of media including literature, television, and film. By analyzing the kinds of changes which the fantastic mode has undergone in order to accommodate postmodern concerns, this project attempts to answer both how and why the fantastic has maintained its popularity and effectiveness. The first chapter seeks to define the fantastic mode by tracing the history of its definition from the early twentieth century up until the present. In doing so, it revisits the contributions of such analysts as Vax, Caillois, Todorov, and Freud. The second chapter discusses the changes to conventions demanded by postmodern discursive strategies, many of which include a back-and-forth movement between equally valid interpretations of the text. A discussion of Armin Ayren’s “Der Brandstifter,” a comparison of a recurring X-Files sub-plot to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and an analysis of an intentionally self-reflexive episode of The X-Files demonstrate these changes. The third chapter introduces game theory as a way of understanding the back-and-forth movement typical of the fantastic mode. Hanns Heinz Ewers’s “Die Spinne” is used to illustrate the psychoanalytical aspect of this movement. The next chapter compares and contrasts three vampire films, The Addiction, Lair of the White Worm, and Nadja, in order to demonstrate how the degree to which this back-and-forth movement is present is an indicator of how successfully the fantastic effect emerges. The fifth chapter introduces modern physics as another mode for understanding the presence of the fantastic mode in the postmodern era. The analysis of House of Leaves in the final chapter illustrates how postmodern theory, game theory, and physics all work together to explain the fantastic’s effectiveness. This dissertation’s aim is to explain how and why a mode once defined as a specific nineteenth-century phenomenon keeps reinventing itself and re-emerging to continue to frighten and entertain us.

This dissertation aims to study three very important works in English children&rsquo / s fiction: C. S. Lewis&rsquo / s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Philip Pullman&rsquo / s The Subtle Knife, the second book of his trilogy His Dark Materials, and J. K. Rowling&rsquo / s Harry Potter and the Philosopher&rsquo / s Stone. The novels will be analyzed in terms of their approaches toward the conventions of fairy tale, fantasy and romance / to this end, the novels are to be evaluated in relation to their concept of chronotope, and the quest of good versus evil. While the secondary world or multiple worlds presented are going to be analyzed in terms of their perception of time and space along with the presentation of the supernatural elements, the characters will be evaluated in terms of the common classification good versus evil. The main argument of this study concentrates on the gradual estrangement from the crystal clear distinctions of the fairy tale genre to a more shadowy, pessimistic, and ambivalent vision of the fantastic in the children&rsquo / s literature.

This study examines six texts o f the 12[sup th] and 13[sup th] centuries for the fantastic mode. It first refutes the critical assertion that the fantastic could not exist in medieval literature, but also establishes that most of the casually denominated "fantastic" is not. For the genuine fantastic, both in general and in its medieval appearances, questions of reality are at most peripheral. Rather the fantastic mode encodes itself in the narrative structure, creating ambiguity and openness. The structural approach frees the discussion o f the fantastic from theories predicated upon issues of thematics, reality-based analysis, and didactic categorizations o f supernatural objects. The first two chapters synthesize those elements from modern works of fantastic theory, (re)deflning the fantastic based upon a semiotic approach. The introduction concentrates on the need to reexamine the corpus of critical works addressing the fantastic. Chapter 1 summarizes the theoretical discussion in order to adjust the definition of "fantastic" as a critical term according to a more pre-Renaissance view of reality. Chapter 2 proposes the parallel worlds model as a structural model for the identification of the fantastic mode in texts where the supernatural is evident, with an emphasis on fantastic space as an intermediary locale between worlds. The last four chapters apply the parallel worlds model to a selected corpus of six narratives. While the structures of these texts vary in length, the fantastic is consistently manifested in a pattern that alternates between the real world, fantastic space and the otherworld. The open-ended structure of five narratives indicates that journeys to the otherworld are rarely accomplished with a high degree of completion, and therefore the narrative program remains incomplete. The conclusion is a defense of the fantastic within medieval French literature, concentrating on how the supernatural creates /otherness/, fantastic space and openness in the narrative program. The fantastic as a powerful but elusive force within Old French romance narratives often shifts to the merveilleioc in the end. The parallel worlds model, when used in conjunction with other theories for identifying the fantastic, is a structural method that emphasizes openness as a characteristic of the fantastic within medieval romance narratives.

While the theatrical works of Jules Verne have gathered some critical attention over recent years, the text of the Voyage à travers l’Impossible has remained an obscure space in the author’s oeuvre or deemed unworthy by Vernian scholars. Jules Verne has predominantly been seen as a writer of adventure novels whereas the fantastic elements in his work have commonly been overlooked by critics. This thesis examines the ways in which the Voyage à travers l’Impossible amalgamates ideas that are representative not only of the Vernian work in general but also of the pre-freudian spirit of the nineteenth century. By viewing the play within the context of theatrical fantasy, this thesis opens up new paths of analysis in the genre. Part of this endeavour consists of a comparison with a seemingly disparate text: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which, similarly to Verne’s play, facilitates an exploration of the function of fantasy both in literary and theatrical terms as it was first adapted for the stage in 2003. During the course of this thesis I offer an analysis of the trilogy and proceed to cover new ground by comparing this to an analysis of the adapted text. For the purpose of my examination I establish a connection between the two texts by regarding the Voyage à travers l’Impossible and His Dark Materials as dominated by the literary motif of initiation according to the model introduced by Vernian specialist Simone Vierne. I subsequently interweave an array of theories on fantasy, psychoanalysis, topography and the body as part of my analysis of the literary fantastic. Texts by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Irène Bessière, Mircea Eliade, Judith Butler and Vernian critics such as William Butcher are amply used in my readings of Verne and Pullman before I proceed to examine their relevance to the theatrical experience of the fantastic. An analysis of the adaptation of His Dark Materials offers the opportunity for fresh critical insights by creating new perspectives on the function of fantasy in its fluctuation from page to stage and vice-versa. It is through these different perspectives that I revisit old questions and introduce new ones such as the difference between fantasy and the fantastic, their regressive or progressive character, the modification of ii fantastic elements on the passage from the literary to the theatrical and from pre-modernism to post-modernism. Basing my analysis on stories of initiation, I suggest that fantasy evades exclusive association with either progress or regress and only remains faithful to the notions of passage and blurring of frontiers.

Latin American literary criticism has traditionally underestimated the significance of the Gothic aesthetic, in spite of the rich Gothic literary tradition of Latin America. Specifically in the Southern Cone - the focus of my research - there is a particular recurrence and consumption of this genre, not only in literature but also in cinema, which has not been deeply analyzed. I argue that a close examination of the Gothic and Fantastic elements in these novels and films unveils anxieties, repressions and manifestations of social decay that underlie common codes of social decency and the conventions of maintaining an oppressive social tradition. My analysis of particular novels extends from the beginning of the twentieh-century through the Boom; my discussion then extends to film productions from the 1960s to the present. In the first chapter I explore the dissemination of Gothic figures and forms from their eighteenth-century origins to the present. In the second chapter I discuss how the Gothic aesthetic was used at the beginning of the twentieth-century to comment on the effects of modernization and scientific/psychological discoveries in the Southern Cone. I also analyze the Gothic as a powerful feminist discourse. Chapter three focuses on the way the Gothic aesthetic is employed as a mechanism to communicate social and moral decay in a typical Southern Cone family. I also explore how the Gothic is used to question a political-social repression or a dictatorship. In chapter four I focus on cinema in an aesthetically and technically diverse selection of filmes. All of them employ vampirism to comment on different sexual issues, such as repression, incest, homosexuality, fetishism, sadism, and other sexual-social taboos. Finally, the conclusion demonstrates that, while the Gothic aesthetic maintains certain constants throughout the twentieth-century, its underlying meaning shifts to reflect the dominant political-social themes of each era, thus ensuring its continued relevance to popular audiences.

This study sets out from the premise that the fantastic, in the hands of the women writers with feminist awareness,can be used as a tool to subvert patriarchal gender roles that are culturally constructed. The dissertation aims at analysing the fantastic novels by Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Nights at the Circus, and by Jeannette Winterson, The Passion and The.PowerBook as examples in which the transgression of gender roles is achieved through the use of fantastic images. The analysis of the fantastic images in these novels is confined to the definitions by Tzetvan Todorov and Rosemary Jackson. The study asserts that through an efficient use of the fantastic mode, both Carter and Winterson negate culturally dominant notions of reality, whereby they resist the cultural constructions of gender. Within the framework of this dissertation, some concepts like the New Woman, historiographic metafiction, the lesbian continuum and compulsory heterosexualism are also studied where they become indispensable to the role that the fantastic images play. Thus, this study identifies each fantastic image in the novels studied with its possible cultural and political implications so that the &ldquo / un-seen&rdquo / of the culture, a term suggested by Jackson, can be seen. In other words, the study concentrates on the subversive nature of the fantastic images so as to see the ways in which the rigid boundaries of the gender roles in patriarchy can be transgressed

本篇論文企圖運用三種理論，包括傑克森（Rosemary Jackson）的奇幻理論、巴赫金（M. Bakhtin）的嘉年華理論、和依蕊格萊（Luce Irigaray）的假面理論 （masquerade），來分析安琪拉•卡特的《馬戲團的奇幻世界》。本篇論文討論小說中用來解構二元對立以及社會成規的的顛覆的元素。本篇論文分成五個部分來討論。 論文的第一章提供了卡特生平和三個理論的簡略的介紹。論文的第二章以傑克森的奇幻理論為基礎，探討如何以奇幻的呈現手法，達到反動的功用，以為被壓抑的族群發聲。這章也討論到傅柯（Michel Foucault）的圓形監獄的理論。而藉由奇幻理論，小說中的角色和事件，呈現出那些被歸類為不好的、被壓抑的，其實都是權力運作下所產生的。第三章以巴赫金的嘉年華理論來分析小說。文本中的馬戲團，就像是嘉年華世界的化身，充滿了不尋常的事件，舊有的觀點也一一的被挑戰。而藉由這些事件，世俗成規被顯露出來只是建構出來的，而不是本來就存在的。第四章著重於性別方面的議題。以傅柯的權力理論、巴特勒（Judith Butler）的表演理論，和依蕊格萊的假面理論來探討性別成規，以及書中如何打破這些性別成規。最後，本篇論文，以這三種理論，來顯示出小說中對二元對立的解構和對社會成規的反動。 / This thesis aims to analyze Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus with three theories, inclusive of Rosemary Jackson’s theory of fantasy, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theory, and Luce Irigaray’s theory of masquerade. The thesis discusses the blurring elements which aim to deconstruct and to denaturalize received notions and binarism. The thesis is divided into five parts. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of Carter and three theories. The second chapter discusses the function of the fantastic as a method of revealing the repressed. In this chapter, Michel Foucault’s theory of panopticon is also discussed. Through fantastic events and characters, the novel shows that what is forbidden and repressed results from workings of power and discourse. The third chapter analyzes the novel in terms of carnival. The circus is the embodiment of a carnivalesque world in which things are turned upside down and conventional conceptions are challenged. Characters and events that happen in the circus work to reveal the constructedness of norms in society. The fourth chapter, with a focus on gender binarism, analyzes the novel in respect of the idea that gender is performative. This chapter starts with a brief introduction of Foucault’s discursive theory and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. Then, Irigaray’s masquerade is applied so as to demonstrate the notion that gender is formed out of power relations. In conclusion, by interpreting the novel with these three theories, the thesis aims to show the constructed nature of binarism and to introduce different perspectives.