Inspired by a universal, cross-cultural vision, this book provides a comparative analysis of the rhetorical and stylistic features in fantastic literature effortlessly crossing the boundaries of cultures, languages and epochs to explore their literary manifestations of the unknown. According to the author, fantastic literature conveys a form of storytelling whose poeticization bridges the known and the unknown realms (in Gilbert Durand’s mythocritical, transcendental sense). The author’s scope ranges from ancient myths to contemporary literature and addresses developments in Chinese literature and the Greco-Roman fantastic tradition as well as English, French, German and Hispanic literatures. The encyclopaedic breadth and depth of her work responds to the long-felt need for a comparative approach to fantastic literature, bridging Eastern and Western traditions.

The Author: Fanfan Chen is Associate Professor of European and Comparative Literature at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature from the Université de Poitiers. She has published on fantastic literature in academic journals and is now working on a book project entitled « La littérature fantastique chinoise ».

: The imaginary – Rhetoric – Poeticization of the unknown – Mythopoeia – Metaphysics – Metamorphosis – Musicality – Chôra – Yi Jing – Periodization – The evolution of human consciousness – Unus mundus of harmonism – The Eucharistic alchemy of language – Style of recovery – Archaism – Hyperbole – Hypotyposis – The dream-discourse – The mirror-discourse – The magician’s hat-discourse.