Fantastic texts were originally influenced by the accounts of European travelers and their exotic portrayals of the lands and countries they journeyed. The translation of the famed book The Thousand and One Nights (along with its other versions) has substantially contributed to the evolution of fantastic genres including the uncanny, the marvelous, and the supernatural in France and later in England. In the nineteenth century, this type of writing genre attended to the newly-emerging philosophical movements and their exigencies becoming a means of challenge to modern life frustrations and a formula of expression of deprivation, oppression, and repression. At other times, it served as a purely imaginary development to achieve artistic pleasure.
Unlike novels and short stories, fantastic transcripts do not epitomize a specific genre per se, but rather, colorize the elements of the literary genre with varied degrees, shades, and stances. In fact, there is no consensus on the definition of “fantastic narrative” as it transcends the conventions of mimesis, and because it is open to multiple combinations of narration. Most studies dealing with fantastic texts typically address the role of Tzivitian Todorov, who confined the fantastic text and its definition to the “hesitation” common to both reader and character. Such “hesitation” is twofold: either the laws of reality are able to provide an explanation of the phenomena, or, there is a need for new laws that are able to do so.
Still, it is necessary to nurture a holistic view of fantastic literature that is unobstructed by “time of hesitation” and which views the fantastic as a breach of reality and the ordinary. Certainly, to acquire the tribute of being “fantastic,” the text should conjure up all the elements of narration based on fantastic tendencies.