Fantastic Fiction

This course is being proposed to complement existing options available to students on the MSc programme in Comparative and General Literature. It offers an opportunity to engage with a wide range of 19th, 20th century and contemporary European and Latin-American texts through the specific perspective of the genre of the fantastic. How do we define 'Fantastic Fiction' and what is its purpose and effect? Through study of a wide range of modern and contemporary texts that engage with the 'Fantastic' as a genre, this option aims to examine such questions, whilst considering the particular contexts in which each work was published. Students may engage with the intertextual dimensions of particular works; the use of the fantastic as ideological or political tool in literature; society and the individual; the relationship of the fantastic to the 'real'; utopias and dystopias; negotiations of gender and race etc. The course begins with an overview of attempts to theorise the genre (Todorov et al), and is followed by close analysis of a selection of texts (selection may vary from year to year depending on staff availability). Credit Level: 11 Year taken: Postgraduate

Not running in 2025/26