Tzvetan Todorov defines the fantastic as a “subgenre of literary works characterized by the ambiguous presentation of supernatural forces.” Donald Antrim, on the other hand, regards the fantastic not as a genre, but as a condition shared between author and reader: “a potential state” in which “everything is vivid, yet nothing is clearly defined,” where “the fantastical and the real are equally questionable, equally challenged by one another.” Frankenstein’s monster comes to life. Alice goes down the rabbit hole. How can [an] author make these events seem not only uncannily plausible, but even expectable—the sudden eruption of some carefully encrypted logic operating beneath our conscious awareness? How do we ground the fantastic in enough realism to sustain the reader’s suspension of disbelief? This class will explore the fantastic as the strangest and most explicit demonstration of what literary technique can achieve in any genre. We will focus on various kinds of world-making, from magical realms to dystopias to refracted versions of “realism.” Special attention will be devoted to how writers use altered states of consciousness like trauma, intoxication, and psychosis to create a hallucinatory space between the supernatural and the deeply improbable. Readings will also span a wide spectrum of cultures and historical periods, from canonical works like Frankenstein to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities to contemporary novels like Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Joy Williams’ The Changeling, and Donald Antrim’s The Hundred Brothers. Assignments will include several creative writing prompts and longer pieces of original fiction for workshop.

Advanced Writing Courses (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)

WRTNG-UG 1260-000 (14201)
09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Wed
3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)
at Washington Square
Instructed by Gladstone, Bret