TODOROV O TODOROV PART 3

I’ve now finished reading Tzvetan Todorov’s THE FANTASTIC: A STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO A LITERARY GENRE (1970). Contrary to what I wrote elsewhere, I now believe I probably read not just an excerpt, but the whole book some thirty years ago. I noted in Part 2 that Todorov’s emphasis throughout his book is on highbrow fantastic literature, particularly within the genre of horror, with only the most niggling mentions of popular fiction.

That’s probably why I didn’t remember much of the work apart from broad characterizations repeated by other fantasy-critics.

While I’ve always been interested in all forms of literature, there’s no question that from my earliest years my main interest, as a child of the 20th century U.S.A., was in the popular iterations of fantastic literature. If one had only THE FANTASTIC on which to base one’s view of Todorov, it would suggest a person who either never liked the popular arts (unlike, say, Umberto Eco, who validates both popular and canonical art) or one who may have liked them but regarded them as irrelevant to his academic purpose. Todorov’s pronouncements on popular art in Chapter 1 of THE FANTASTIC suggest that the first judgment is the more applicable. Such an outlook is his personal privilege, but its exclusionary nature reduces the applicability of his theory to a small quantity of highbrow literary works. In addition, not only does it fail to address popular iterations of fantasy, Todorov’s theory is also has only loose applicability to many highbrow works of fantasy. Stanislaw Lem mentions Verne, Wells, and Borges, and I would add not only modern canonical fantasists like Lewis and Tolkien (to whom Lem alludes) but also the whole corpus of medieval/Renaissance fantasies ranging from L’Morte d’Arthur to the Faerie Queene.

I made copious notes on Todorov’s work, but I’ll refrain from recapitulating most of them on this blog. However, as I’m affiliated to the myth-critical methodology of Northrop Frye, I have to make a quick response to Todorov’s attempted demolition of Frye’s ANATOMY OF CRITICISM. In essence, it’s a hatchet job, but an amusing one, since it’s evident that Todorov is principally attacking Frye for Frye’s opposition to structuralist literary analysis. Todorov puts forth a few valid points—more than one finds in a similar broadside from Marxist Frederic Jameson—but those valid points are lost in a welter of strained logic and outright hypocrisies.
For instance, Todorov attacks Frye’s classic tome THE ANATOMY OF CRITICISM for relying upon the insights of “extra-literary” authorities such as Carl Jung. Having made that accusation, THE FANTASTIC then goes on to cite either Sigmund Freud or standard Freudian paradigms over a dozen times. This “applies to thee but not to me” double standard does Todorov little credit, though at least he has a pleasing and direct style that makes it pleasurable to refute him. This quality arouses my own “sense of wonder” given that the incredibly obfuscative Roland Barthes was one of Todorov’s mentors. Perhaps Todorov and Barthes had a falling-out after Barthes deserted structuralism: Todorov even goes so far as to claim Frye and Barthes occupy an identical literary tradition, which is like saying that pagans and Christians are the same because they both use the word “myth” at times.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of Todorov’s book is that although it’s standard academic practice to use his term, “the fantastic,” none of the lit-crit books I’ve encountered use the term as he does. Todorov’s main concern throughout THE FANTASTIC is with works that “hesitate” between giving the reader a clear view as to whether or not the events described are “uncanny” (peculiar but not violating rational explanation) or “marvelous” (clearly violating rational paradigms). But in my opinion most modern critics of fantastic literature simply ignore Todorov’s insistence on “the fantastic” as an “evanescent” genre:

“The fantastic, we have seen, lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and [viewpoint] character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from ‘reality’ as it exists in the common opinion” (p. 41).

It’s my impression, rather, that later critics use “the fantastic” much as I use “metaphenomenal:” as a portmanteau term for everything uncanny and marvelous, irrespective of whether there is any “hesitation” within the text. I said earlier that I’d “destroy hesitation with all dispatch,” but now I find the best way to do so is to ignore it to death. What Todorov finds so central to the experience of the literary fantastic, I consider a minor side-note at best. In Part 4 I’ll enlarge on what should be central to a good theory of literary fantasy, with particular emphasis on the Todorovian notion of “genre.”