The aim of the present work is to consider the articulation between the carnival and the literary fantastic, perceived as a dynamic subversion of reality able to arouse fear. Carnival’s imagery and fantastic strategies as metamorphoses can be considered like deviation from consensus reality, and allow to understand more specifically how the fantasy literature works and its differences from mimetic fiction.
Literary techniques like autorepresentation or intertextual references highlight the text’s fictionality, and conduct a literary reflection on the poetics of fantastic prose fiction.
The fantastic is not trying to represent the world as we know it, and the pleasure of reading is here closely linked to the notions of willing suspension of disbelief or secondary belief.
In 1695 Charles Perrault offered to Mademoiselle, a Grand-niece of Louis XIV, a book calligraphed by a copyist. It contained five “Tales of Mother Goose” and one of them carried the title “Bluebeard”. Originally, Bluebeard was a character from oral tradition stories describing him attacking his successive wives and children. He is also associated with the awful history of Gilles de Rais, sodomite and assassin. Gilles de Rais (or Retz) was a great Lord belonging to one of the most influential French families at the beginning of the 15th century. As a former companion in arms of Joan of Arc, he “supposedly lost his mind at the same time, as his friend was losing life”. The bloody nature of his crimes is obvious, as much as in the story of Perrault, where we encounter dead women with slit throats, attached to the wall, whose bodies “shined with curdled blood”. In literary tradition, the character still arouses interest of writers and undergoes many transformations. Thus, it is interesting to provide a brief overview of this Knight in retreat, alchemist and practitioner of occult arts, “who has committed countless crimes in his castles of Machecoul and Tiffauges, […]” and who was arrested and hanged in 1440.
Key words: Tales, collective memory, literary and historical character, archetype, life story of Gilles de Rais, Alchemy
Enlighted elites were imperatively struggling against fear, perceived as the source of tensions and social conflicts. This struggle incited a number of very different initiatives, such as the articles from Encyclopédie [Encyclopaedia] by Diderot / d’Alembert or from Dictionnaire philosophique [Philosophical Dictionary] by Voltaire, philosophical tales by the latter and, finally, the philosophical novel by Jan Potocki, in its two versions from 1804 and 1810, recently discovered by François Rosset and Dominique Triaire. The fear of supernatural and, especially, of death is being tamed thanks to well-known literary proceedings (irony or the comic), which may be described using the theory of games by Roger Caillois or by Colas Duflo. Hereafter, we are putting forward the ambivalence appearing in the first case and particularly noticeable in Potocki’s writings.
Key words: Voltaire, Jan Potocki, philosophical tale, philosophical novel, theory of games, fear, irony, the comic
Two inhabitants of Lorraine, named Emile Erckmann (1822–1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826–1890) – authors of numerous short stories inspired from local and Rhineland’s folklore – wrote fantastic stories in which fear and anxiety are given pride of place. All the ingredients of fear are present – ghosts, apparitions, magnetism, lycanthropia, murders, violent deaths, miscarriages of justice. Would this subtle mixture of folklore and fantastic have a didactic, even metaphysical aim?
Key words : fear, fantastic, ghost, short story, didactics, metaphysics
The present paper focuses on La Morte amoureuse [Clarimonde] by Théophile Gautier telling the story of a young priest who just before his ordination falls in love with a beautiful and mysterious courtesan. Nevertheless, he neglects his love and sets off to the parish entrusted to him. One day he is asked to visit a dying woman who turns out to be his beloved. Unable to restrain his desire, the priest kisses the dead Clarimonde, who comes back to live. Afterwards, she pays him a visit every night and takes him to Venice where they live a voluptuous life. Unable to stand the double existence of a priest and a young lord, the protagonist accepts to destroy the corpse of his beloved, which ends their relationship. Alternative to God’s love, mysterious Clarimonde, evil or vampire, becomes an interesting concept reflecting the Romantic dreams and anxieties.
Key words : Gautier, Clarimonde, vampire, Romanticism, God, love, death
The vampire, represented in various media forms, has always scared or fascinated people. Dracula’s current descendants have become a “consumer good” ; the vampire figure is now displayed for commercial purposes, which are profitable both for publishing houses and television productions. In contemporary children’s literature which blends sentimental and paranormal events, vampires once so scary, shiver in fear in front of some of their counterparts. Fear is no longer the sole privilege of the bloodsuckers’ victims ; novels for young adults are populated with living dead who are no longer the sole embodiment of loathsome otherness. Capable of both loving and suffering, they feel fear like mere mortals. Vampires, once awfully stressful and intimidating characters, now shiver in fear in front of some of their counterparts. This is quite an unprecedented turn of events !
In the nineteenth century, Paris was an uncertain place due to several causes. The middle-class felt a threat to a society which was being redefined in an unexpected way and lost its traditional marks. Paris, as a mythical and symbolic city, offers then an ideal framework to the detective novel from its origins, kind of novels that spreads the insinuation of the danger in the city. Emile Gaboriau, father of the French detective novel, plays on the fear and the anxiety towards this changing world. The capital presents a dark and scary atmosphere convenient to the mystery and crime. Thus, the lower class is seen as wild and dangerous; the city which spreads out presents blurred and disturbing borders; finally, the night strengthens the dark face of Paris exciting the fantasies and emphasizing the fears.
Key words: detective novel, Paris, nineteenth century, night, crime, border, popular class
The purpose of this article is to present new sources of fear in short fantastic stories of Jean-Pierre Andrevon. First, it is necessary to underscore the anxiogenic role of the Uncanny – the malaise born out of rupture in everyday life which was once reassuring. The paper discusses the discourses of space and body – both origins of the Uncanny penetrate each other, become in the indubitable report, follow the reciprocate, often regressive dynamic. The familiar space metamorphoses into the space of a scary and distended geometry; the healthy, normal body transforms into a strange and alien one; the fragmentation of the body designates the disintegration of the familiar space. In brief, short fantastic stories of JeanPierre Andrevon emphasize particularly the isotopic acuity of the fragmentation of the body and the fragmentation of the space. The topic is analyzed using psychoanalysis and, especially, psychoanalytic terms like the Uncanny, the return of the repressed and the mirror stage.
Playing with reader’s fear is one of the objectives of fantastic literature. The present study, analysing two traditional fantastic motifs: of a ghost and of a dream, indicates the importance of time and space in Anne Duguël’s novels Gargouille and Le corridor. Particular attention was drawn to two space structures inextricably linked with time: the haunted house in Gargouille and the dream world in Le corridor. The aim of this analysis is to show how the author uses chronotope in order to arouse the reader’s fear.
Key words: fear, neofantastic, ghost, dream, Anne Duguël
Marie José Thériault (1945), from Quebec, and Nadine Monfils (1953), from Belgium, began their narrative writing career almost at the same time – the first one in 1978, with La Cérémonie, and the second one in 1981, with Laura Colombe, contes pour petites filles perverses. In their tales, they both show a predilection for the fantastic as well as for the marvelous, and they explore dark inspiration which can arouse anguish, fear or even horror. They both express this inspiration through real aesthetics of cruelty, and by expanding an inner world in which morbid eroticism figures prominently. These are some aspects studied in this paper.
Key words: short story, cruelty, eroticism, Francophone literature
The series Harry Potter, proposed by Mrs J.K. Rowling, is a good case in order to understand and analyse the emergence of the fear. Harry Potter, traumatized, orphan and mistreated baby is confronted with the dread when he meets “Dementors”.
Who are Dementors? How does Harry discover their existence ? Why is Harry more sensitive to the confrontation with the dementor than the other children ?
To answer to this question, we shall study the link between the trauma and some kind of depression in early mourning. Those are the “white” depression and the “cryptophorie”. On the other hand, Mrs. Rowling proposed a therapeutic solution to the despair : the production of a “Patronus” and the reference to the paternal function.
Key words : Harry Potter, Dementors, fear, depression, early mourning, therapeutic, paternal function
In the present article, the author discusses the ideology in some Spanish horror movies made between 1968 and 1976, during the last years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The Spanish horror production, also called fantaterror, seems to be an indicator of the problematics of Spanish society. Indeed, it seems that the outbreaks of violence and eroticism of these films relate to the double face of the last years of the dictatorship, that of hedonism and of the repression of desires. By examining the specific aesthetic of the fanta‑terror and its narrative duality between Good and Evil, we want to show that behind the apparent entertainment these movies are inherently shaped by Franco’s regime. They deserve to be evaluated in terms of political, economic and cultural conditions in which they were created.
Key words: horror movies, fantasy, Spain, Franco’s dictatorship, ideology in film
Ghosts populate Mario Bava’s films and are at the heart of Black Sabbath (1963). The three episodes of this anthology film depict their terrifying appearance. The Telephone offers a harrowing “huis-clos” amid manipulation and revenge. The Wurdulak, a Gothic fantasy tale, questions the fear of the other through the essential ambiguity of the vampire. Finally, in The Drop of Water, a cruel tale if any, the ghost appears as an image of the Unheimlich and a metaphor for wholly-assumed special effects and illusions. This manifesto-type triptych film is thus characterized by a quest of both efficiency and distance to arouse fear on the screen, on the faces that inspire it as well as on those who express it.
Key words: Mario Bava, fear, ghosts, faces, film aesthetics
The present article discusses a motif of horror fiction, the “Evil transfer”, that remained unnoticed until now. The key idea of this motif is that, because evil is eternal and indestructible, it cannot be annihilated but only transferred. Four books and movies of the second half of the 20th c. have retained our attention: Thinner by Stephen King, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, It Follows by David R. Mitchell and the Ring trilogy by Kôji Suzuki. However, these rather recent examples must not hide the diachronic depth of such a motif: Renaissance humanists or biblical texts also present a similar idea.
Key words: motif (narrative), curse, horror fiction, horror films
The article offers an analysis on the mechanisms of fear in movies. How does a fictional work manage to inspire emotion? It is our question here. Starting from Walton’s theories, we offer to understand the connections that are created between the viewer and the work itself. Moreover, we explore how a movie can be recognized by the viewer through the process of authentification. It is precisely the matter at hand: fear in movies is the result of a connection between the viewer and a fictional universe. Through the examination of the links between those two, we can reveal how fear works in a certain type of narrative.
Key words : fear, ego, fictionnal worlds, fiction, game, authentification
Our article talk (once again) about the literary history; it calls into question the relationship, not very good, between the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and the French writer Madame de Staël in the early nineteenth century. Devoid of all civic and political rights, like all women at that time, Madame de Staël has established herself before the most important statesman of Europe by her intelligence and by the great power of her writings.
Key words : Madame de Staël, Napoleon Bonaparte, French romanticism, fear, woman’s civic and political rights
The topic of this article is an analysis of space presented in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. The specific emphasis is put on the novel’s attributes which provoke fear in the reader. Apart from characteristic features of other subgenres of popular novel Les Misérables includes a significant number of gothic novel’s elements and consequently fits squarely in literary horror fiction. The majority of these characteristics is related to a presentation of anxiogenic space which is an embelmatic example of gothic genre. It manifests itself thorough an existence in a novel of gloomy, terrifying, death- related places namely, Waterloo battlefield, old Vaugirard cemetary, the areas of Chelles forest. Several buildings depicted by Victor Hugo for instance the ruins of Gorbeau and Petit-Picpus-Saint-Antoine monastery resemble black dwellings (demeures noires) – due to their image and their narrative functions in the text – which are currently demonstarted in Gothic fiction novels.
Key words: gothic novel, black novel, literary horror fiction, anxiogenic space, fear, teror, fright, black dwelling
Fear has always entered the human soul. Aware of this fact, Emile Zola speaks of this emotion in his fictional works, especially his neurotic characters. Thus, either the “crazies”, victims of the breakdown of the time, real hysterical, religious neurosis or the “irregulars of hysteria” and “doubles” of Zola, all are animated by a neurotic, even hysterical fear. Speaking of fear in his neuroses, Zola speaks of his own fears related to his neurosis. Furthermore, the writer offers a remedy to the neurotic fear, remedy that occurs through the pipe of the passions.
Key words: fear, neurosis, hysteria, Second Empire
No one remembers today the achievements of the Grand-Guignol theatre, the French theatre of Horror, which scared the Parisians through the first decades of 19th century. The appearance of the slasher movie contributed to the collapse of the theatre which was unable to compete with the new means of expression. However, cinema adopted a lot of techniques, which aimed at raising fear and panic among the viewers. The Author undertook the task of analyzing three plays, nowadays forgotten, of the most fruitful writer André de Lorde who specialized in dramas concerning the pure themes of madness. In L’Homme mystérieux the playwright presents the story of a man suffering from persecution mania who strangles his saviour, while La Petite Roque, written on the basis of Guy de Maupassant’s novel, describes the case of a mayor of one town in Normandy who killed a young virgin out of lust. Invisibles, on the other hand, is devoted to the agony of an old lady who was kept in mental asylum for 20 years. In each of the plays the Author of the article analyzes the mechanism employed by the writer in order to create the gradation of fear which is brought with mastery to paroxysm.
Key words : André de Lorde, Grand-Guignol, The French theater of Horror, fear, madness
In this article, we aim to analyse the representations of the First World War as a cultural trauma in three works of fiction classified as belonging to the “néofantastique” convention, which, according to Jean-Pierre Andrevon, summarises “our fears and uncertainties”. We intend to demonstrate that in La scie patriotique (1997), by Nicole Caligaris, La vigie (1998) and by Thierry Jonquet, Cris (2001) by Laurent Gaudé, the Great War is approached either explicitly or metaphorically, yet at the same time indicative of the phenomena of spectre and abjection.
Key words : Great War, spectre, abjection, fantastic fiction
The contemporary novel seeks to revive cosmic obscurity and the fear it arises. Its, therefore, opposes electricity that has put an end to such obscurity, and also stands against romantic night as produced by poets. Such writers, like Jean Giono and Henri Bosco, have been able to redeem to the night its majesty and weight. They have, indeed, a vision which construes night as a counter-force to the current estrangement of modern times. The night usually overflows the day and effaces its light during unclear weather or when a tempest produces somber greenness. The character adopts Dionysian attitude, simultaneously drowning into chaos. Writing enables one to hear the night’s whisper. It transits smoothly from clarity to obscurity, from soft events to terrible ones.
In this short paper, we propose to analyze the Fear experienced by the Romanian intellectual when Secret Police could knock at his door at any time of night or day to imprison and torture him.
Inoculate Fear represented the main instrument of torture practiced by the communist Secret Police. Examples extracted from writings of two intellectuals subjected to communist terror (N. Steinhardt and C. Noica) will show us the states of mind man experiences from the moment the idea of Fear seeps into his head to different “strategies” imagined in order to live with it.
Keywords : exile, communism, prison, Fear, Nicolae Steinhardt, Constantin Noica
In this paper I analyze several contexts in which the phenomenon of fear appears in Roland Barthes’ thinking In the first place, I will point out that Fear (written in capital letter in L’Image) placed “at the origin of everything”, becomes the fundamental fear, inseparable from the human condition. After all, for The Pleasure of the Text Barthes chose as its epigraph a quote by Thomas Hobbes ‘The only true passion in my life has been fear’, before introducing the idea of the proximity (identity?) of bliss and fear. Secondly, I will show that when Barthes writes about fear, he often refers to Donald Woods Winnicott’s article The Fear of Breakdown. In conclusion, I will point to an ambivalent status of fear in Barthes’s analysis: its recognition and acceptance are accompanied by desire for its disappearance.
Key words: Roland Barthes, Fear, Donald Woods Winnicott
Unlike Hitchcock, in Bataille there are no seagulls whose unusual behaviour would epitomize the inexplicable. And yet one may find countless birds in his texts. The aim of this article is to investigate what I call the “avian metaphor” in order to show that bird images are meant to convey fear originating from Bataille’s fantasized world and refer to the primal scene (Urszene) which represents his father with “huge, ever-gaping eyes that flanked an eagle nose.” I also endeavour to reveal the autobiographical background of what Bataille defines, in a more philosophical language, as angoisse (anguish/anxiety).
Key words: autobiography, fantasy, trauma, horror, death
The autobiographical novel Cendres et braises by Ken Bugul, a contemporary Senegalese author, presents a comprehensive overview of the victim’s behavior in a violent relationship. By using strong defense mechanisms, the abused woman becomes emotionally attached to her aggressor, isolates herself, refuses any help and stays trapped in the cycle of violence. In the case of Marie, the novel’s main character, anxiety has always been the basis of her relationships since she was abandoned by her mother. The purpose of this study is to analyze the dynamics between the victim and the abuser, as well as to show that anxiety is the source of self-destructive behavior and examine how it keeps the woman in an abusive relationship.
English
Język Polski
Français (France)
Español (España)
Italiano