Fantastic Literature

In this article it will be analyzed the ideological articulation of gender and national aspects in three Catalan novels written during last Franco’s years and transition to democracy: M. A. Capmany’s Quim/Quima (1971), Ll. Villalonga’s Andrea Víctrix (1974), and M. A. Oliver’s El vaixell d’Iràs i no Tornaràs (1976). Capmany uses Woolf’s transhistorical motif of  Orlando in order to recreate the facts that happened in Catalan lands with a hopeful thinking on future social, national and gender matters. Oliver reflects about liberty and totalitarianism basing on an ideological and stylistic working out, in which sexuality and May 1968 protests utopia are protagonists. On the other hand, Villalonga presents a world where ethical and gender duality’s paradigm has undergone a radical turn, that is to say, a dystopia that shows coexisting failed sexuality with political and moral decadence.

This article starts from the assumption that the so-called feminine fantastic is not limited exclusively to the fantastic written by women (“female fantastic”), but that it extends to the fictional universe of women represented (by both men and women) within the field of fantastic literature and cinema. The aim of this work is to analyze the treatment of one of the most idiosyncratic images of the fantastic genre, and one that also has a special impact on the configuration of the feminine: the doll.
On the one hand, I examine the evolution of this fantastic motif from its first manifestations in cinema and literature in order to determine whether it involves a transformation of how the feminine fantastic is represented, according to periods or genders.
On the other hand, I establish some correlations between the image of the fantastic doll, and the development of processes such as the dollification of women or the humanization of the doll as it is identified in contemporary society. This is seen as an exemplification of how both the alleged feminine fantastic (which is questioned here), and the feminist fantastic adjust, alter, or adapt, in the same way as the society in which it is contextualized or integrated.

Ombeline et le Dragon
Par Amandine Marshall (texte) et Fabien Rypert (illustrations)

Malheur au royaume du puits aux trois lanternes ! Un dragon sème la terreur et dévore les provisions des habitants ! Le roi Éon et son armée n’ont pas réussi à le retrouver. Mais la princesse Ombeline n’a pas dit son dernier mot : armée de son armure et de son épée, elle part à la recherche de ce méchant dragon qui fait peur à tout le monde…

Although studies on Stephen King (1947-) traditionally belong to the field of popular culture, some of his work, such as The Dark Half and «Secret Window, Secret Garden,» give an insightful perspective on contemporary fiction. Drawing upon methods used in literary analysis and textual interpretation, this book proposes a new reading of Stephen King’s fiction as a literary reflection on the artistic identity of the writer and on writing and shows that horrific descriptions do not necessarily exclude metafiction. Stephen King as a Postmodern Author aims to serve as an introduction to major theories influencing contemporary American literature, such as narratology, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and various theories of fiction.

Bien que les études sur Stephen King (1947-) appartiennent traditionnellement au domaine des études culturelles, certaines de ses œuvres, comme La Part des Ténèbres et « Vue imprenable sur Jardin secret » donnent une perspective intéressante sur la fiction contemporaine. A partir d’analyses littéraires et herméneutiques, ce livre propose de lire les textes de Stephen King sous un angle nouveau, celui d’une réflexion littéraire sur l’identité artistique de l’écrivain et sur l’écriture. Par là même, ce livre montre que la présence de descriptions horrifiques dans une fiction n’exclut nullement la présence de métatextualité. Stephen King as a Postmodern Author se veut une introduction aux principales théories qui ont influencé la littérature contemporaine américaine comme la narratologie, la psychanalyse, le postmodernisme et autres théories de la fiction.

Racconti Saraceni di Sicilia  di Michelangelo Caldara. Presentazione, Stralci. Sinossi. Indice.
        La Sicilia delle radici meticce. Berberi, arabi, aleramici, normanni, greci, sicani. Humus, di ancestrali legami con la terra; con l’anima contadina. Il sangue smarrito.
    Cronaca speciale di persone comuni e frammenti particolari di eventi e personaggi della storia, inusualmente s’incontrano e si fondono in Racconti Saraceni di Sicilia. Brevi racconti. Sapori moderni e antichi.
Link to the Book:
https://publishde.bookmundo.com/books/220004

Le roman intitulé Truismes de Marie Darrieussecq est fondé sur un monde semi-fantastique dans lequel on raconte ce qu’une jeune fille fait pour s’intégrer à la société dans les conditions extrêmes de l’époque. La protagoniste subit deux métamorphoses fondamentales ; d’abord, il est question de sa transformation du corps humain en forme de truie, ensuite, de la transformation psychologique à cause de ce qu’elle a vécu. Comme le titre, le contenu du roman est également basé sur une structure de multiples significations. Le fait que l’héroïne narre les événements comme narrateur-personnage (je) au lecteur, procure que le lecteur comprend bien la transformation de l’héroïne et les résultats de cette transformation. La narratrice transporte à une autre dimension le regard de la société sur la femme par la métaphore de truie. Elle traite cette problématique via les transformations d’une jeune fille dans un univers créé par des éléments fantastiques. Ce travail vise à révéler la structure du roman au niveau de la narration.

Ramon Vinyes has been known in the literary world because of his being mentioned in García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad as a fictional character, “the Catalan sage”. In fact, he was a poet, playwright and short stories writer who did create his works in his homeland, as well as during his exile years in Colombia, though always writing in Catalan. Vinyes’ most acknowledged short story is “L’Albí” (The Albino), telling the bizarre aftermaths of a monstrous presence in a hinterland’s Catalan village. In the present article, the author analyses in which ways fantasticity and weirdness are used in the configuration of this mysterious character –which is a meaningful projection of otherness–, taking into account the function of ideology and parody in the text. Thusly, the study argues about the role played by several allusions to English history and significant gothic motives, showing that these elements, along with fantasticity, ideology and parody, build a singular narrative fiction at the cutting edge of its contemporary Catalan literary context.

"Siempre vertiginosos, siempre implacables en la voluntad de llevar a sus personajes al abismo o dejarlos colgados del borde, los relatos de este volumen (nueve, por cierto, como aquellos muy memorables de Salinger) son pequeñas ratoneras exactas y temibles. Pletórica de referencias pop y también de observaciones agudas sobre la realidad, la prosa de Josué Sánchez traza una serie de tramas crispadas alrededor de un puñado de obsesiones irrenunciables: la comida como escondite, diálogo o lucha, pero también el divorcio, el abandono, la maldita soledad.

No se trata del hambre es un libro memorable que abre el apetito para leer más". Antonio Ortuño

The objective of this article is to examine how the classic fantastic motif of meta- morphosis is used by Anne Richter, a Belgian writer and theorist of women’s fantastic, not only to arouse fear in the reader but also to raise women’s issues, particularly marriage. Using studies by fantastic literature theorists (including Labbé, Millet, Malrieu, Prince and Richter), as well as feminist critique texts (Cixous, de Beauvoir, Kristeva), the author analyses the motif of metamorphosis in two of Richter’s stories – Sul passo dell’Arno [Over the Arno Pass] and Un sommeil de plante [The Sleep of Plants] – showing the interweaving of classic elements of a fantastic work with the “extraordinary nature of women” and their womanhood.

The work of Mexican writer Amparo Dávila (b. 1928) has been read and studied intermittently over the past sixty years. Thanks to the publication of her Cuentos reunidos (2009) by Fondo de Cultura Económica, the author from the State of Zacatecas, has obtained new readers, as national and international critics have once again taken an interest in her narrative. However, little has been done to explore the link between her stories and philosophy. This work proposes to establish a dialogue between “Fragment of a Diary”, one of the tales included in Tiempo destrozado (1959), and the philosophy of Plato, Longino, Immanuel Kant and Eugenio Trías about the beautiful, the sublime, and the sinister, also considering Sigmund Freud’s contributions about the uncanny.

Tzvetan Todorovs "Introduction a la litterature fantastique" (1970, dt. 1972) hat sich trotz aller Kritik in der akademischen Diskussion als der folgenreichste Text zur Bestimmung des Phantastischen in der Literatur erwiesen. Obgleich bald weitere impulsgebende Publikationen auch in deutscher Sprache folgten, ist die Phantastik ein Stiefkind der deutschsprachigen Literaturwissenschaft geblieben, versehen mit dem Odor des Trivialen. In diesem Sinne versucht die vorliegende Aufsatzsammlung, die Theoriebildung über Todorov hinaus konsequent und vorurteilslos voranzutreiben. Als Beiträger konnten namhafte internationale Phantastik-Experten aus Germanistik, Anglistik, Slawistik, Romanistik und anderen Fächern gewonnen werden: H.R. Brittnacher, R. Innerhofer, R. Lachmann, C. Ruthner u.a. Sie entwickeln aus verschiedenen, interdisziplinären Blickwinkeln heraus Phantastik-Theorien, die auch für die "Neophantastik" des 20. Jahrhunderts Gültigkeit beanspruchen dürfen. Alle präsentierten Theoriemodelle werden an einem Referenzkorpus phantastischer "Klassiker" (Hoffmann, Puschkin, H. James, Maupassant, Kafka und Borges) exemplifiziert. >> INHALTSVERZEICHNIS

Lange galt unzuverlässiges Erzählen als Sonderfall homodiegetischen Erzählens, was erst jüngst hinterfragt
wurde. Der Artikel zeigt, dass die ontologische Klassifizierung nach Genette zu kurz greift.
Unzuverlässigkeit scheint in der Heterodiegese besonders bei unzuverlässigen Reflektoren oder als
mimetische Unzuverlässigkeit möglich. Dazu ist insbesondere die Perspektive des Erzählers zu untersuchen.
Am Beispiel von Kehlmanns historischem Roman Tyll kann gezeigt werden, dass auch Gattungsvorgaben
das Spiel mit unzuverlässigem Erzählen grundieren. Tyll erscheint als Spiel mit erzählerischer
Unzuverlässigkeit.
It was only recently that narratology opened itself for the possibility of heterodiegetic unreliable narration.
This article argues that Genette’s ontological criteria of homo- and heterodiegesis fall short with
regards to unreliable narration. Heterodiegetic narration seems susceptible to (mimetic) unreliability
particularly when internal and even zero focalization are used. The narrator’s perspective is of particular
interest here. Daniel Kehlmann’s 2017 historical novel Tyll is a perfect example for heterodiegetic unreliable
narration that not only plays with various strategies of unreliability but also calls into question
the generic implications of the historical novel as means to represent history.

On the often overlooked irony in Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel” (which is not the exhaustion of possible expression) and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (which is not a death-of-the-author-birth-of-the-reader allegory). The narrator of "The Library of Babel" claims that it contains everything it is possible to express in all languages, yet the play with the library's character set (twenty-two lowercase letters, space, comma, and period - so we are told) shows that it is incapable even of expressing this brief story. The narrator of "Pierre Menard" is tied, through several allusions, to a prominent Nazi that Borges had elsewhere criticized - which demonstrates that his insistence that meaning be tied to the context of reading is meant as an implicit critique or deconstruction of reader-response criticism in the style of Barthes or Jauss.

This work aims to contextualize the novel
A casca da serpente, by José J. Veiga, in the general
panorama of literary subgenres known as “alternative
history” (or “fictional uchronia”) and “recursive fiction”,
or crossover. It is justified not only because this novel
is considered the first example of alternative history
in Brazilian literature, but also because it is possible
to divide it into two quite distinct parts, the first being
alternative story stricto sensu and the second an
example, although problematic, of “recursive fiction”.
On the other hand, the novel is not exhausted in these
two categories, but uses them for the construction
and reinforcement of a historical and political myth,
as we will try to demonstrate.

Visitare il "pianeta d'argento", conquistare il silenzioso globo che rischiara ogni notte, è stato il sogno dell'uomo di età moderna. Tra Cinque e Settecento, infatti, dall'epoca delle grandi scoperte geografiche al secolo dei Lumi, scrittori, scienziati, uomini di fede e di cultura hanno tentato in ogni modo di concretizzare questa inafferrabile visione. Grazie a un lungo e minuzioso lavoro di ricerca, Marco Ghione racconta la loro storia e illustra le soluzioni tecniche che tanti, eccezionali cittadini della Repubblica delle Lettere hanno elaborato per trasformare l'impossibile in realtà, dalle macchine volanti di Cyrano de Bergerac e Francis Godwin alle creature soprannaturali fantasticate da Keplero e Kircher. Intanto, scienziati e astronomi andavano puntualmente definendo le prime riproduzioni attendibili della superficie lunare, con una nomenclatura sistematica che, a partire dall'Almagestum novum di Giovanni Battista Riccioli, è giunta fino ai giorni nostri, all'impresa dell'Apollo 11 e allo sbarco sulla luna.

Este ensayo examina los orígenes de la narrativa fantástica colombiana, a partir de una relectura de la novela Una triste aventura de 14 sabios, del escritor José Félix Fuenmayor. Aquí expongo cómo la emergencia y consolidación de lo fantástico responde a una experiencia paradójica con la modernidad. De esta forma, muestro cómo el trabajo literario fantástico de Fuenmayor fue impactado no solo por una condición histórica conflictiva, sino también por la incorporación de diversos artefactos culturales a su estética literaria.

This essay examines the origins of the fantastic literature in Colombia by analyzing José Félix Fuenmayor novel, Una triste aventura de 14 sabios. I argue that the emergence and consolidation of the fantastic have their origins in a paradoxical experience with modernity. I explore how Fuenmayor’s literary creation was not only impacted by a historically conflicting condition produced by the rise of modern subjectivity, but also by the incorporation of different cultural artifacts into his literary aesthetics.

Для ссылки:
Лавлинский С.П., Малкина В.Я., Павлов А.М. Фантастическое как теоретико-литературная и эстетическая категория // Гротескное и фантастическое в культуре: визуальные аспекты: сборник статей / ред. и сост. В.Я. Малкина, С.П. Лавлинский. — [б. м.] : Издательские решения, 2017. С. 25-69.

Książka prezentuje nowatorskie podejście do tematyki zombie w literaturze. Miejsce centralne zajmują w niej rozważania genologiczne i antropologiczne, których celem jest zdyskontowanie powszechnego wyobrażenia o narracjach zombiecentrycznych jako tekstach wyłącznie horrorowych czy niezaangażowanych w istotne dyskursy. Popkultura stanowi bardzo czuły rezonator wszelkich przemian, kryzysów czy paradygmatów, co oznacza, że znajdują one odbicie w jej artefaktach. Dlatego istotnym aspektem zawartych w książce rozważań staje się prezentacja zaangażowania literatury zombiecentrycznej w przepracowywanie doświadczeń konfliktów współczesności. Wszystkie te kwestie są boleśnie niedostrzegalne dla wielu badaczy, przyjmujących a priori, że wytwory nienależące do mainstreamu czy niezakorzenione w tradycji literackiej nie odznaczają się wysokoartystycznością bądź reprezentują wyłącznie walor rozrywkowy. Książka "Narracje zombiecentryczne..." ma na celu wskazanie czy podpowiedzenie nieco innej drogi bądź sposobu oglądu tekstów wpisujących się w popkulturę i obudowanych wokół bardzo symbolonośnej figury zombie.

Nel bosco sacro. Realtà, finzione, magia e natura ne Il ramo d'oro di James G. Frazer http://belphegor.revues.org/456 1/13 Belphégor Littérature populaire et culture médiatique 121 | 2014 : Fantastic Narratives Dossier Fantastic Narratives Nel bosco sacro. Realtà, finzione, magia e natura ne Il ramo d'oro di James G. Frazer FABIANA DIMPFLMEIER Texte intégral 'E così il coro accenna a una legge segreta' : così vien voglia di commentare la raccolta dei dati in Frazer. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Note sul Ramo d'oro di Fraser) Per certi versi, è di simili 'infedeltà creative' che si nutre il progresso della conoscenza. (Fabio Dei, La discesa agli inferi) Nel 1922, dopo tre edizioni arrivate ad espandersi fino a dodici volumi, l'antropologo vittoriano James G. Frazer pubblica l'editio minor de Il ramo d'oro, consacrandosi a fortuna quasi imperitura 1 . 4

Este artigo busca primeiramente estabelecer uma demarcação acadêmica para a ficção folclórica enquanto subgênero da ficção especulativa, distinguindo-a meramente de uma literatura regionalista ou de outras tentativas de  nomenclatura contemporâneas. Traz ainda reflexões e apontamentos para delinear as potencialidades e desafios com os quais esta se depara na cena nacional de literatura fantástica. Para tanto, iniciamos explorando e problematizando o conceito de folclore, e em seguida construímos as aproximações entre a literatura fantástica brasileira e os temas da cultura popular desde o Romantismo do século XIX e seus ímpetos de valoração da tradição até o Fantasismo contemporâneo, no qual os mitos e lendas servirão de mote para desbravar esse Brasil fantástico ainda tão pouco explorado.

Başka Zaman Kütüphaneleri adıyla çevrilmiş olan The Library, Sırp yazar Zoran Živković'e 2003 yılında Dünya Fantezi Ödülü'nü kazandıran ve ayrıca yazara birçok ülkede ün getiren bir öykü kitabı. Toplam altı kısa öyküden oluşan kitap modern zamanlarda, hepimizin içinde yaşadığı dünyada, sıradan adamların başından geçen fantastik olayları konu alıyor. Hepsi farklı görünse de bu öyküleri birbirine bağlayan ve aslında birbirinin uzantılarıymış gibi hissetmemize sebep olan öykülerin hepsinin kitapları ya da kütüphaneleri merkeze koyuyor olması. Fantastik olanın insan zihninde oluşturduğu şaşkınlığın bir sonucu olarak düşünülebilir mi bilinmez ama, bu öyküler insanda garip bir korku ve sıkışmışlık hissi yaratmaktan da geri kalmıyorlar.

Volwassenen die graag fantasy lezen, worden bestempeld als escapisten; mensen die willen vluchten uit de realiteit. Daarnaast wordt fantasy gezien als een minder literair genre. Met dit essay wil ik dat weerleggen en fantasy ondersteunen als een literair genre.

BOOKS Alice in Transmedia Wonderland. Curiouser and Curio ser New Forms of a Children’s Classic. Jefferson: McFarland, 2016. (forthcoming) Body-Texts in the Novels of Angela Carter. Writing from a Corporeagraphic Point of View . Lewiston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. ( pp. 372, ISBN10: 0-7734-48926 ISBN13: 978-0-7734-4892-6) EDITORIAL WORK 5. Co-editor of EJES special journal issue Feminist Interventions in Intermedial Studies (forthcoming in 2017) with Dr Catriona McAra 4. Exploring the Cultural History of Continental Europ ean Freak Shows and Enfreakment. Eds. Anna Kérchy and Andrea Zittlau. Newcastle Upon Ty e: Cambridge Scholars Press. 2012. (Isbn13: 978-1-4438-4134-4 Isbn: 1-443 8-4134-X) 3. Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales: How Ap plying New Methods Generates New Meanings. Ed. Anna Kérchy. Lewiston, Lampeter: The Edwin Me llen Press, 2011. (pp. 520, ISBN10: 0-7734-1519-X ISBN13: 978-0-7734-151 9-5) 2. The Iconology of Law and Order . Legal and Cosmic . (P...

Pere Calders is one of the most recognised contemporary Catalan authors, especially on account of his uses of humorous and fantastic motives. In the present article two of his short stories are analysed as samples of involvement between fantasticity, on the one hand, and literality, metafiction and discourse construction on the other. It is showed how the narrative voice manipulates language semantically, syntactically and pragmatically in order to create ambiguity and, therefore, enlarge the limits of reality. If narrator’s parody strategy is seen as the representation of the unreal in front of everyday life, and reality as what certainly tortures and strongly worries people in the name of reason, we can conclude that in Calders’ short stories unreality is subtly invaded by the real, producing at the same time a parody of a parody in itself.

Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Collection "Perspectives"

Résumé:
Le roman contemporain trahit une fascination troublante pour l’irrationnel. Délaissant volontiers les rivages trop éclatants de la raison, il convoque des figures magiques souvent anachroniques (spectres, chamanes, sorcières) pour sonder les méandres d’une psyché collective dont les peurs et les impensés résistent aux voies de l’entendement. 
Il ne s’agit pas pour autant de renouer avec d’anciens régimes explicatifs, magiques ou religieux : face à un monde « désenchanté » (Weber), le surnaturel infiltre des dispositifs esthétiques qui oscillent entre la tentation ambiguë d’une reconstruction du sens et le deuil, nostalgique ou désabusé, d’une transcendance dont les romans attestent la perte.
Première étude panoramique consacrée à ce phénomène, cet ouvrage propose une analyse morphologique et fonctionnelle du surnaturel dans la littérature contemporaine en parcourant notamment les univers fictionnels d’Antoine Volodine, Sylvie Germain, Alain Fleischer, Marie NDiaye et Christian Garcin.

Ambiguity is now widely seen by Western scholars as a defining
feature of literature. Keats’s notion of negative capability, the creative potential of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Milnes 71), anticipates the cognitive concept of ambiguity tolerance that has been recently found to correlate with creativity. It can be argued that the fantastic is thus an extreme example of literariness. But what exactly does ambiguity mean in the context of the fantastic? The article explores it in the context of two contemporary novels based on fairy tales: The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham and The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

Este trabalho faz uma análise de “Os amigos dos amigos”, de Henry James, procurando perceber como se configuram o “fantástico” e o “amor romântico” nesse conto. Para isso, as discussões sobre o “duplo” e sobre as ambiguidades jamesianas integram este trabalho ao darem sustento à
argumentação. Utilizamos a teoria de Remo Ceserani em O fantástico para a abordagem do modo fantástico e as considerações de Jorge Luis Borges, Otto Maria Capeaux, Italo Calvino e Wayne C. Booth sobre algumas as particularidades de Henry James presentes nesse conto.

(Résumé sur @nalyses:) Avec Aliss (2000), Patrick Senécal rend hommage au roman de Lewis Carroll, Alice au pays des merveilles (1865). Chez Senécal, le roman pour la jeunesse se transforme en un roman pour adultes, variante « X »; il explore les limites du réel et du possible par le biais des aventures d’une adolescente de Beauport dans un Montréal parallèle. L’analyse structuraliste de Landais montre comment Senécal emploie la métalepse narrative pour effectuer le passage d’un personnage diététique à un univers métadiégétique et engendrer le sentiment d’inquiétante étrangeté à la source du fantastique.

In his novel Aliss (2000), Patrick Senécal pays homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its fictional universe. In the Quebec author’s hands, the children’s tale is transformed into a work for adults. Senécal explores the limits of the real and the possible through the adventures of an adolescent from suburban Brossard who finds herself in a parallel-world Montreal. A narratological analysis demonstrates how Senécal employs Genette’s ontological metalepsis to move a diegetic character into a metadiegetic universe and to evoke the sense of the uncanny which lies at the source of the fantastic.

RESUMO

Este artigo apresenta a análise do Conto O caso inexplicável da orelha de Lolô, com o objetivo de investigar a aproximação em torno da concepção vinculada à exploração da dimensão artística literária das configurações imagéticas que permeiam o conto goiano e, ainda as possibilidades de análise dos aspectos do fantástico e da fantasia presentes na obra. A análise será pautada pela discussão que envolve a obra, no intuito de verificar a presença dos gêneros literários como núcleo estruturador da narrativa. Para tanto, utiliza-se os conceitos presentes nos trabalhos de Tzvetan Todorov (2012), de Filipe Furtado (1980), de Selma Calasans Rodrigues (1988), de Paul Ricoeur (2005), entre outros. O estudo da obra será alicerçado por teorias que versam um diálogo que desvende, a partir das dimensões do fantástico e da fantasia, o lugar e o entrelugar elaborados pelo emprego da linguagem literária no texto.

ABSTRACT

This article presents the analysis of the tale O caso inexplicável da orelha de Lolô, in order to investigate the approach around the linked design the exploitation of literary artistic dimension of imaging settings that permeate the goiano tale and also the possibilities of analysis aspects the fantastic and fantasy present in the work. The analysis will be guided by discussion involving the work in order to verify the presence of literary genres as the structural core of the narrative. For this purpose it will be used the concepts present in the work of Tzvetan Todorov (2012), Filipe
Furtado (1980), Selma Calasans Rodrigues (1988), Paul Ricoeur (2005), among others. The study of the work will be underpinned by theories that deal a dialogue that unravel, from the fantastic and fantasy dimensions, the place and between place designed by the use of literary language in the text.

Frankenstein é um mito. Um mito literário e um mito moderno. O que significa isso? O que diferencia um mito literário de um mito tradicional, cosmogônico? O mito tradicional, como bem observa Jean-Claude Carriére (2003, p. 30), é um mito fundador, ou seja, um mito que precede os homens e as instituições, e que dá sentido à vida dos homens e das instituições. Já um mito inventado por um homem, um artista, é o que Carrière chama de "mito acompanhador, que teria nascido, por algum frêmito de um espírito privilegiado, ao mesmo tempo que um movimento ainda secreto da História, que, sem ele, seria menos afirmado, menos perceptível" Um "mito que segue o curso das coisas, que vem em seguida, como para ilustrar mais tarde um desvio decisivo das mentalidades". O mito moderno nasce desse encontro inesperado, entre o instinto de um artista e uma tendência decisiva na história do mundo. E. Michael Jones exemplifica assim a situação: Mary Shelley criou o mito de nossa época-uma época razoavelmente próxima ao Iluminismo. Certamente, um dos indicadores de que esta época ainda nos pertence é o fato de que a história de Frankenstein continua a ser contada. E continuará a ser contada enquanto o Iluminismo, com sua propensão para manipular os seres humanos segundo as leis da "natureza", permanecer em seu curso. (JONES, 2000, p. 94) E conclui: Frankenstein, nesse aspecto, é o oposto de A letra escarlate, de Nathaniel Hawthorne. Frankenstein é um romance medíocre, que gerou filmes de primeira ordem porque também é um mito; A letra escarlate é um grande romance que gerou filmes terríveis, porque não é um mito. Hester Prynne, a adúltera protagonista de Hawthorne, é um grande personagem ficcional, mas não encarna o mito de sua era do mesmo modo que Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein é, nesse ponto, o mito do Contra Iluminismo. A história sintetiza as aspirações do Iluminismo e explica, em seu estilo rudimentar, porque elas estão fadadas ao fracasso. (JONES, 2000, p. 95) Como costuma acontecer, um mito literário moderno é, o mais das vezes, uma espécie de avatar de algum mito tradicional. No caso de Frankenstein, é um avatar de Prometeu. Não por coincidência, o título completo do romance de Mary Shelley é Frankenstein, ou o Moderno Prometeu. Mas tanto Prometeu quanto Frankenstein