歐洲幻奇文學: 詩學、文
類與歷史
國立東華大學英美系
陳鏡羽 Fanfan Chen
I. 幻奇一詞的字源、幻奇敘事創作
與理論定義之崛起
 A. Fantastic, Fantastique, Fantasy字源探討
 1. Fantastic 2. Fantasy 3. Fantastique
I. A. Fantastic, Fantastique, Fantasy
字源探討
 Fantastic: [obsolete] imaginary XIV;
[obsolete] imaginative XV; extravagantly
fanciful XVI. – Old French fantastique –
Medieval Latin fantasticus, Late Latin
phantasticus – Greek phantastikós, formed
on phantázein make visible, phantázesthai
have visions, imagine; […]. [Onions, 344]
I. A. Fantastic, Fantastique, Fantasy
字源探討
 Fantasy, phantasy: [obsolete] mental apprehension;
obsolete phantom; obsolete delusive imagination;
baseless supposition XIV; changeful mood XV;
imagination XVI. – Old French fantasie (modern
fantaisie) = Provençal fantazia, etc., Italian fantasia –
Latin phantasia – Greek phantasíá appearance (later,
phantom), mental process, sensuous perception,
faculty of imagination, formed on phantázein; […].
[Onions, 344]
I. A. Fantastic, Fantastique, Fantasy
字源探討
 The Littré (1863): (1) fantastique only exists through imagination
(2) it only appears to be a corporeal being. The dictionary also
specifies that “fantastic tales generally refer to fairy tales, ghost
tales and in particular, a genre of tales to be in vogue by
German Hoffmann (Fantasiestücke), where the supernatural
plays an important role. Hoffmann is one of the distinctive
writers following the German tradition of the Märchen. This
definition is also accepted by the Dictionnaire de l’Académie
of 1878 and the Trésor de la Langue fraçaise (1980). Around
this epoch (first half of the 19th Century), the word fantastique
appears as a substantive to name a certain category of literary
expression, i.e., a genre. [Le Robert]
B. Fantastique成為文類之始 (19世紀浪
漫主義): 德國創作、法國仿效與理論
 1. Jacques Cazotte (The Devil in Love [Le diable
amoureux], 1772); Jean Potocki (The Manuscript
Found in Saragossa [Le Manuscrit trouvé à
Saragosse], 1810)
 2. Hoffmann: The Sandman [Der Sandmann], The
Golden Pot: A Modern Fairytale [Der goldne Topf. Ein
Märchen aus der neuen Zeit], The Nutcracker
[Nußknacker und Mausekönig]
 3. Charles Nodiers, Théophile Gautier
B. Fantastique成為文類之始 (19世紀浪
漫主義): 德國創作、法國仿效與理論
 4. Charles Nodiers, Maupassant, Sartre, P. G.
Castex, Schneider, Roger Caillois, Louis Vax,
Jacques Finné, Tzvetan Todorov (Harold
Bloom)
C. 繼Freud與Todorov之後西方理論
的發展與定義
 Eric Rabkin, C. N. Manlove, Brooke-Rose, T.
E. Apter, Kathryn Hume, Jackson Rosemary,
Gero von Wilpert, Zondergeld and
Wiedenstried, Vittorio Strada, Richard
Mathews, Jean-Luc Steinmetz, Roger
Bozzetto, Denis Mellier, etc.
I. C. 繼Freud與Todorov之後西方理
論的發展與定義
 Jean-Luc Steinmetz 的主題分類
 Beings and Forms: 1. ghosts 2. vampire 3. double 4.
automaton (golem, android, mannequin), mandragora
(mandrake), shattered parts of the body. 5. monster
 Actions: 1. apparition 2. possession 3. destruction 4.
metamorphosis
 Causative Principal: 1. reasonable explication 2.
dream 3. magic or occult 4. drug 5. telekinesis,
telepathy, hypnosis, animism or magnetism.
D. 作品不斷逃脫定義與理論：作家
自己的觀點
 Coleridge (1772-1834): suspension of disbelief
 Charles Nodiers (1780-1844): false, vague, and true fantastic
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tales
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893): ambiguity
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937): horror
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973): Fairy-story
Julio Cortázar (1914-1984): Taoist mysticism and the nondualistic fantastic
Stephen King (1947-): ambiguity and monstration
Léa Silho (1967-): myth, fantasy, fantastique, hard fantasy
II. 詩學與文類
 A. Todorov的詩學與其「法式」幻奇文類
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(fantastique)之詩學理論
1. 文類之定義與文學性
2. 定義: (1)讀者/小說世界/猶豫 (2)小說人物 (3)非寓言
與抒情詩的閱讀
3. 與鄰近文類之區別: l’étrange(the uncanny) 和le
merveilleux (the marvellous)
4. 幻奇敘事: utterance, the act of uttering, syntactical
5. Gogol, Kafka
II. A. Todorov「法式」幻奇文類
(fantastique) 之形式詩學定義
 (1) The text obliges the reader to consider the world
of the character as real. The reader has to hesitate
between the supernatural (le merveilleux) and the
natural (l’étrange) explanations.
 (2) The character may also feel this kind of hesitation.
Thus the reader identifies with the character.
 (3) It is significant that the reader adopts a certain
attitude towards the text: an allegorical or “poetic”
interpretation must be refused.
II. 詩學與文類
 B. Tolkien由語文學出發之仙境故事(Fairy-
Story)次創造(sub-creation)理論
 1. 兒童與成人
 2. 神話, 語言, 童話
 3. 仙境故事/神話創造四要素: Fantasy,
Recovery, Escape, Consolation
II. B. 神話與幻奇敘事
 Joseph von Eichendorff: Autumn Sorcery
 John Keats: “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
 Wagner’s Opera Tannhäuser
 Goethe: “Erlkönig”
 W. B. Yeats: “The Stolen Child”
 Léa Silho: “Runaway Train” (changeling)
 吸血鬼傳說與文學神話
II. 詩學與文類
 C. 由Plato, Aristotle詩學到虛幻想像理論
 1. chora, 四大元素, 神話想像, 虛幻想像(老子)
 2. C. G. Jung, Gaston Bachelard, Gilbert
Durand, Pierre Brunel, André Siganos,
Christian Chelebourg, Paul Ricoeur, J.-C.
Marion, Owen Barfield, J. R. R. Tolkien
 3. 參考中國志怪之論述
II. 詩學與文類
 D. 由古典修辭學到新修辭學: 修辭到小說
 1. hyperbole, euphemism, hypotyposis,
metalepsis, mise en abyme
 2. 夢, 鏡子, 魔術師的帽子
II. 詩學與文類
 E. 幻奇敘事創造、修辭與文體: 分析幻奇小說
三面向
III. 幻奇文學歷史研究:
歷史性與文學性
 A. 歷史性延續觀點:
 Nodiers, Schneider, Caillois, C. N. Manlove,
Vittorio Strada, Richard Mathews, Zondergeld
and Wiedenstried
III. 幻奇文學歷史研究:
歷史性與文學性
 B. 幻奇文學歷史分期理論與人類意識與語言演
化的關係
 1. 原始感受期
 2. 神話製造期
 3. 懷疑期
 4. 去妄存真期
III. 幻奇文學歷史研究:
The fantastic in the Ancient World:
 The Gilgamesh Epic (ca. 2500-1500 BC): an historical king of
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Uruk in Babylonia on the River Euphrates.
Enuma Elish (1000 BC): Babylonian epic
The Book of Mountains and Seas (1600 BC-771-221 BC)
The Mahabharata (400 BC-400 AD)
The Odyssey and The Illiad (Homer, 800-900 BC)
Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus, 525-456 BC)
Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1 AD?)
The Aeneid (Virgil, 1st century AD)
The Golden Ass (Apuleius 125?-200? AD)
Soushenji (In Search of Gods) (Gan Bao, 317-420 AD)
III. The Medieval fantastic:
 Beowulf (ca. 9th century)
 Elder Edda (Vikings, Iceland, composed 800-1100, written down 1150
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1250)
Thousand and One Nights (9th century): Sharazad vs. cruel King
Shahriyar
Nibelungenlied (Germany, ca. 1200)
The Divine Comedy (Dante, 1265-1321)
Arthurian legends (5th-6th century)
Arthurian romance: Érec et Énide, Cligès, Yvain, Lancelot Perceval ou
le Roman du Graal (Chrétien de Troyes, ca. 1135- c. 1190)
Parzival (Wolfram von Eschenbach, ca. 1170-ca. 1220)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1370)
Le morte d’arthur (Sir Thomas Malory, 1469-1470/1485)
Journey to the West (Wu Cheng’en, 1592)
III. Renaissance and Classicism:
 Gargantua and Pantagruel (François Rabelais, 1495?-1553)
 Don Quixote de la Mancha 1605 (Miguel de Cervantes, 1547
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1616)
Faerie queene 1590 (Edmund Spenser, 1552?-1599)
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (published c. 1604)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1595-96 (William Shakespeare,
1564-1616)
Paradise Lost 1667 (John Milton, 1608-1674)
Fables (Jean de La Fontaine, 1621-1695)
Fairy tales (Charles Perrault, 1628-1703)
Gulliver’s travels 1726 (Jonathon Swift, 1667-1745)
III. 1760-1810 suppression and extinction
under the Enlightenment
 18th century: epoch of reason and science.
Believes and divine power are doubted.
Paradoxically, the fantastic is born as a
“renaissance of the irrational” against the
rationalist main stream. Occult influence:
Swedenborg, Martines de Pasqually, Luis
Claude de Saint-Martin.
III. 1760-1810 suppression and extinction
under the Enlightenment
 England:
 -The first Gothic novel: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otrante (1764)
 William Beckford’s Vathek: An Arabian Tale (1786, originally written in
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French)
The 1790s saw the heyday of the English Gothic:
Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk (1796)
-Gothic novels in 19th century: combination of ancient faith and modern
incredulity
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) (German film:
The Sin Eater)
John Polidori’s The Vampyre (after 1813 Byron’s poem “Giaour”)
III. 1760-1810 suppression and extinction
under the Enlightenment
 France:
 Jacques Cazotte’s Le Diable amoureux (1772)
 Jean Potocki’s The Manuscrit trouvé à
Saragosse (1797-1807)
III. 1760-1810 suppression and extinction
under the Enlightenment
 Germany:
 German fantastic is closely related to Märchen (fairytale):
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Volksmärchen and Kunstmärchen
Movement of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress): tales are
reintroduced.
Brothers Grimm’s Children's and Household Tales [Kinder- und
Hausmärchen] (1807-1810/1819-1822)
Neo-Platonism, philosophical impact
Ludwig Tieck’s Eckbert le blond (1796), an example of
Kunstmärchen
Goethe’s Faust [Faust: der Tragödie zweiter Teil] (Part I, 1806;
Part II, 1832)
III. 幻奇文學歷史研究:
歷史性與文學性
 1810-1850: First generation “the Romantic
fantastic” and the Golden Age
 Napoleon wars in Europe and industrial
revolution
1810-1850: First generation “the
Romantic fantastic”
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Germany:
E.T.A. Hoffmann (1771-1822): Fantasiestücke
Achim von Arnim (1781-1831): Les Héritiers du majorat
Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838): Peter Schlemihl
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France:
Charles Nodier (1780-1844)
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855)
Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870)
Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)
1810-1850: First generation “the
Romantic fantastic”
 Russia :
 Alexandre Pouchkine (1799-1837)
 Nicolaï Gogol (1809-1852)
 Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881)
 Denmark:
 Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
1810-1850: First generation “the
Romantic fantastic”
 Anglo-Saxon:
 Washington Irving (1783-1855): Rip Van
Winkle, The Spectre Bridegroom, The
Adventure of the German Student
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): The
House of the Seven Gables, Young Goodman
Brown
1850-1900: The second generation
 France:
 Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870)
 Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
 Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1838-1889)
 Jules Verne (1828-1905)
1850-1900: The second generation
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Anglo-Saxon:
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Fitz James O’Brien (1828-1862)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)
George MacDonald (1824-1905)
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Bierce Ambrose (1842-1913)
The Fantatic Fin de Siècle
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France:
Jean Lorrain (1855-1906)
Marcel Schwob (1867-1905)
Anglo-Saxon:
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
Saki (1870-1916)
Henry James (1843-1916)
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951)
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Lord Dunsany (1878-1957)
Germany:
Gustav Meyrinck (1868-1932)
Hans Heinz Ewers (1871-1943)
IV. 幻奇小說範例: 詩學與美學
 A. 法式幻奇: 浪漫與寫實
 1. The Venus of Illes [La Vénus d’Ille]
(Prosper Mérimée, 1803-1870)
 2. Night: A Nightmare [La nuit] (Guy de
Maupassant, 1850-1893)
IV. 幻奇小說範例: 詩學與美學
 B. 童話幻奇
 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (E. T. A. Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
IV. 幻奇小說範例: 詩學與美學
 C. 仙境故事/史詩奇幻
 1. The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien,
1892-1973)
 2. The Neverending Story [Die Unendliche
Geschichte] (Michael Ende, 1929-1995)
IV. 幻奇小說範例: 詩學與美學
 D. 神話幻奇/硬奇幻
 1. Les contes de la Tisseuse (Léa Silho,
1967-)
IV. A. 1. The Venus of Illes [La Vénus d’Ille]
(Prosper Mérimée, 1803-1870)
 A perfect fantastic narrative:
 A. Realistic cornerstone of the fantastic:
 A geographical and historical realism (realistic
setting)
 B. Todorov’s norm and The Venus of Ille
 1. The natural explanation:
 2. The supernatural explanation
IV. A. 1. The Venus of Illes [La Vénus d’Ille]
(Prosper Mérimée, 1803-1870)
 C. The mise en abyme mirrors the double features of the narrative
 1. the local scamps
 2. the pedestal inscription: CAVE AMANTEM: (1) Beware of him who
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loves thee; mistrust thy lovers (2) Beware if she loves thee
D. Atmosphere of fear and menace
1. The supernatural clues
2. Fear and uneasiness
3. Evil: the statue Venus as a diabolical being through various visions
4. Transgression
E. The ambiguity in characterization
F. Denouement: perpetual hesitation
2. Night: A Nightmare [La nuit] (Guy
de Maupassant, 1850-1893)
 J'étais aux quais, et une fraîcheur glaciale montait de
la rivière. La Seine coulait-elle encore? Je voulus
savoir, je trouvai l'escalier, je descendis... Je
n'entendais pas le courant bouillonner sous les
arches du pont...
 I had reached the quays, and a cold chill rose from
the river. Was the Seine still flowing ? I wanted to
know, I found the steps and went down. I could not
hear the current rushing under the bridge…
2. Night: A Nightmare [La nuit] (Guy
de Maupassant, 1850-1893)
 Des marches encore... puis du sable... de la vase...
puis de l'eau... j'y trempai mon bras... elle coulait...
froide... froide... froide... presque gelée... presque
tarie... presque morte.
 A few more step…. Then sand. … Mud. … then water.
I dipped my hand into it. I was flowing… flowing…
cold… cold… cold… almost frozen… almost dried
up… almost dead.
IV. A. 2. Night: A Nightmare [La nuit]
(Guy de Maupassant, 1850-1893)
 Et je sentais bien que je n'aurais plus jamais
la force de remonter... et que j'allais mourir
là... moi aussi, de faim — de fatigue — et de
froid.
 I fully realized that I should never have the
strength to come up, and that I was going to
die there… in my turn, of hunger, fatigue and
cold.
IV. B. 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
 The mise en abyme
IV. B. 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
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Aufgewacht – aufgewacht
wollen zur Schlacht
noch diese Nacht
aufgewacht - auf zur Schlacht
Come, awake, measures take;
Out to the fight, out to the fight;
Shield the right, shield the right
Arm and away, this is the night
IV. B. 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
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Knack knack – knack
dummes Mausepack
dummer toller Schnack
Mausepack - Knack – Knack
Mausepack - Krick und Krack
wahrer Schnack.
Knack, knack, knack,
Stupid mousey pack,
All their skulls we’ll crack.
Mousey pack, knack, knack,
Mousey pack, crick and crack,
Cowardly lot of schnack!
IV. B. 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
 Aber wie wird es nun weiter werden? - Sowie
Nußknacker herabspringt, geht auch das
Quieken und Piepen wieder los. But what is
going to happen now? At the moment when
Nutcracker sprang down, the squeaking and
piping began again worse than ever.
IV. B. 1. The Nutcracker [Nußknacker und
Mausekönig] (Hoffmann, 1776-1822)
 Ach! unter dem großen Tische halten ja die fatalen
Rotten unzähliger Mäuse und über alle ragt die
abscheuliche Maus mit den sieben Köpfen hervor! Wie wird das nun werden! –
 Alas! Under the big table, the hordes of the mouse
army had taken up a position, densely massed, under
the command of the terrible mouse with the seven
heads. So what is to be the result?
V. 幻奇文學是經典的、嚴肅的研究主題、
提供了愉悅的、淨化的審美經驗
 由托爾金到中世紀文學研究、語文學、文學史
 由托多洛夫到詩學、新修辭學、文體學
 由虛幻想像神話批評理論到語言哲學、隱喻學、
形上學本體論