Acceso usuarios
Charles H. Geyer
In his seminal work The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1973),1 Tzvetan Todorov attempts to elucidate the essential qualities that define fantastic literature, and to establish the boundaries that distinguish the fantastic genre from other types of fiction. One criticism that has frequently been leveled against Todorov's theorization of the genre is his reference to an overwhelmingly European archive,2 and the near total exclusion of non-European texts from his study.3 This oversight is striking for many reasons, not the least of which is that The Fantastic was published on the heels of the Spanish American Boom, at a moment in which various texts originating in the Americas that were centered around the fantastic or its neighboring genres4 were being circulated internationally, to substantial critical acclaim, for an expansive global audience.5 Whereas various critics have addressed (and rectified) Todorov's omission of Spanish American texts from the canon of fantastic literature, fewer have noted the absence of Brazilian works. Furthermore, fewer still have examined the way in which the inclusion of Brazilian examples of the fantastic may problematize, or expand upon, the important theoretical foundation laid out by Todorov in The Fantastic.6 This essay will continue the work undertaken by previous scholars to integrate Latin American literature into the critical discourse around the fantastic, by offering a new perspective on Todorov's theory based on the study of Brazilian texts. Specifically, I will analyze Memóriás postumas de Brás Cubas (1881), by Machado de Assis, and "O pirotécnico Zacarías" (1943),7 by Murdo Rubiäo, with the purpose of reexamining the nature of the fantastic event in literature, in order to grant it a signifying capacity that Todorov does not consider. A comparative reading of these two texts will reveal a fundamental connection between the ironic and the fantastic, in which the fantastic event becomes representative of the absolute incomprehensibility that, according to Paul de Man, the trope of irony necessarily engenders.
