10 Examples of Fantastic Tales

The fantastic tales They are a type of short story that proposes fictional universes whose operating laws differ from reality. present characters of everyday life who find themselves in the presence of the inexplicable and the distant from the logic. For example: "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges.

In general, a fantastic tale is considered to be based on some extraordinary event or element that has no existence in the real world. His imaginary is made up of:

• ghosts and apparitions
• Magic 
• imaginary creatures (devils, vampires, sylphs)
• gods 
• supernatural forces
• transformations or disappearances
• alterations of time and space

The solution to the conflict occurs in the articulation between the mysterious and the rational. In this genre, the way out is ambiguous and consists of letting the mystery remain surrounded by a halo of vagueness, as if to prevent the reader can decide if the unusual event has a supernatural cause or if it is an indication of madness or oneirism of his protagonists.

The term "fantastic" comes from the Latin

phantasticus which means “imaginary, unreal”, and this from the Greek φαντασία which means “appearance, spectacle, image”. This word defines the hesitation experienced by a person who only knows natural laws and who is faced with a supernatural event.

The conflicting tension between the possible and the impossible within the fantastic tale distinguishes it from other similar categories such as the marvelous and science fiction, in whose stories there is no such conflict.

• See also: types of stories

Characteristics of fantastic tales

The fantastic tale was born between the 18th and 19th centuries, on the same ground as philosophical speculation, and reached its peak between 1880 and 1914. It is the product of an inheritance romantic.

Its most characteristic qualities are:

• narrative plot. The fantastic tale introduces an everyday situation in which an inexplicable or supernatural event occurs.
• supernatural element. The strange element breaks into the narrative plot of a normal world suddenly. It usually materializes in sensory images.
• Hesitation. In this fantastic universe, there is an uncertainty and a feeling of strangeness that are caused by the contrast between the everyday situation and what does not fit the norm.
• accomplice reader. A committed participation on the part of the public is necessary, so that it enters into the logic of the fantastic tale.
• The fantastic not wonderful. According to Tzvetan Todorov, the fantastic genre should not be confused with the marvelous, since the latter presupposes the acceptance of the improbable and the inexplicable.

Examples of fantastic tales

1. "The Feather Pillow" by Horacio Quiroga (1917) 

The story tells the story of Alicia who, a few months after marrying Jordan, gets sick with the flu and spends several days in bed convalescing. One morning, the protagonist wakes up passed out, for which her doctor orders her to rest completely, without being able to explain what disorder she suffers from. She wakes up every day with deteriorated health until the doctor orders blood tests, which reveal that she is afflicted with severe anemia without being able to interpret its cause. This is how the days go by, while Alicia sleeps in her room, with certain episodes of screaming and a lot of sweat, the product of hallucinations.

Upon her death, the servant finds blood stains on her cushion that had gone unnoticed and, when cutting the cover, from the feather cushion, they find a kind of bird parasite, which had sucked her blood until it was gone. she.

1. "Another Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (1898) 

The long story, also conceived as new, tells the story of a young governess who is hired to care for two orphaned children who live with her housekeeper and some of her servants in a Victorian mansion, a situation to which she goes with happiness. She soon finds out that the children, Miles and Flora, live in shock due to the murky and immodest relationship between two former employees of the house, from which she suggests a series of abuses against Miles: the one committed by Miss Jessel, his last governess, and a servant named Peter Quint, his butler. uncle of him

The young governess seeks to help them, but she immediately begins to hear voices, suspicious sounds, and to see the image of the previous governess, died in strange circumstances, and that of the servant, in what, apparently, would be apparitions spectral.

1. "Call of Cthulhu" by H. Q. Lovecraft (1926)

The story begins by narrating the death of a professor at Brown University, whose study documents arrive at the hands of his nephew, the protagonist of the story, and who, through them, discovers the existence of Cthulhu. This creature is some kind of large cosmic entity or deity, living in the depths of the ocean. Judging by a sculpture that is next to the professor's documents, it is a kind of octopus, mixed with a dragon and with a humanoid shape. This being, who supposedly arrived with his extraterrestrial followers from space millions of years ago (before the birth of the first man), is venerated by a sect that seeks to awaken him from the submerged city where he rests to impose his dominion over the Land.

This is the first story in which Cthulhu is presented, who later becomes the central figure in the stories of this author.

1. "The rope" by Silvina Ocampo (1971)

This short story stars Antoñito López, a mischievous boy who liked dangerous games. He waited for many years for the adults to give him the old rope from the well to play with, and when they did, he invented thousands of games until he turned it into a poisonous snake. Little by little, the rope began to come to life: to climb the stairs and climb the trees. Over time he also began to sprout a forked tongue and bangs and turned green. Antoñito wanted to hang the cat with it, but Primula (as he called it) did not allow it, so the boy considered that it was a herbivorous snake and fed it grass and water.

One December afternoon, the boy threw her into the air, without anticipating her return, and Primrose stuck his tongue into his chest and killed him.

1. "The Sandman" by E. T. TO. Hoffmann (1817)

This fantastic tale tells the life of Nathaniel, a student, who, even as a young man, is traumatized by the death of his father, which occurred when he was little. According to him, his father had been killed at the hands of the sandman. Nathaniel thinks he sees his figure in the lawyer Coppelius, a visitor to his house who has a series of meetings with his mother, and that one day, while he is hiding in the office, he manages to see how he murderess. Although he finds himself engaged to Clara, the young man falls in love with Olimpia, an automaton that ends up being the cause of Nathanael's madness.

The story is composed based on three letters, in which the loss of reason on the part of its protagonist is observed.

1. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", by Washington Irving (1820)

This fantastic tale tells the life of Ichabod Crane, an extremely superstitious and fearful, who decides to go to the town of Sleepy Hollow to remedy his misery and desire for love. Once there, he will fall in love with the beautiful and young Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of Baltus Van Tassel and sole heir to his fortune, from whom he will seek to ask for her hand. However, she is also wanted by the prankster Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, who will do anything to get him out of Sleepy Hollow.

He will even be able to turn to an ancient specter that everyone calls the famous headless horseman.

1. "When we talked to the dead", by Mariana Enríquez (2013)

The story has five teenage friends as protagonists, who come together to communicate with the spirits through a Ouija board. In one of those meetings, an account that he wants to speak with his parents, who were disappeared by the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship, to find out where their bodies are. When they begin to summon the spirits and the dead to ask them about the whereabouts of Julia's parents, an inexplicable situation occurs: an apparition that will cause the meetings to end and they will abandon the Ouija board to always.

1. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

The story tells the story of a young gentleman who is invited by a handwritten letter to the old mansion of a friend. of childhood, Roderick Usher, an eccentric artist who lives completely secluded in that home, along with his sister Lady Madeline. Already from the beginning it is suggested that something happens in relation to the house and its inhabitants, since while the The protagonist approaches the entrance, the idea of ​​the decadence of the home is connected with that of the health of his population.

During the first talk with his friend, he learns of the health problems that afflict both him and Lady Madeline, whose symptoms are described as a "morbid acuteness of the senses". The first to die is her sister, and her remains are deposited in a crypt. After this, terrifying events take place that culminate in a tragic end.

1. "Dinner", by Alfonso Reyes (1912)

In this tale, both dream and reality intersect and, with them, the dimensions of space and time are intermingled. It tells the story of Alfonso, who receives an invitation to dinner from two women he does not know: Doña Magdalena and her only daughter Amalia.

At nine bells, he goes to his appointment and, after drinking a lot of wine after dinner, they head towards a dark garden, where Antonio falls asleep for a long time on a bench, product of his incipient drunkenness. Upon awakening, he finds himself in a strange atmosphere where Amalia tells him the story of a captain and leads him to the room where she shows him a portrait of himself. Seized with terror, he runs to his house.

1. "Tantalia", by Macedonio Fernández (1930)

This story tells the story of Him, a man who loses the desire to love, and desperately seeks a way to recover them. The condition of the character places him in a catatonic state, of living halfway, which makes him desperate. This does not go unnoticed by Ella, his lover, who sends him a clover plant as a gift, with the intention that by providing protection and love to the plant, He can recover his sensitivity affective He thus begins to do it for a certain time, until he realizes how much care he is taking. It needs, above all, external agents such as excessively cold or hot weather or the aggression of animals. He ends up feeling more intimidated by the possibility that his plant will die, and he becomes obsessed.

Follow with:

• Horror stories
• short police stories
• Latin American stories
• magical realism literature
• Differences between short story and novel

Interactive test to practice

References

• Calvino, I. (1987). "Introduction". Fantastic tales of the XIX. Siruela Editions. Available in: http://200.111.157.35/biblio/recursos
• Marino Espuelas, A (2015). “Fantastic”. Spanish Dictionary of International Literary Terms. Madrid: (DETLI) Higher Council for Scientific Research. Available in: http://www.proyectos.cchs.csic.es
• Roas, D. (2013). “The fantastic as destabilization of the real: elements for a definition”. Chimera: Literature magazine, No. 354, p. 22.
• Rest, J. (1991). modern literature concepts. Publishing Center of Latin America. CEDAL.
  Todorov, T. (2011). Introduction to fantasy literature. Buenos Aires: Paidos.