The Modern Fantastic

According to Tsvetan Todorov, the modern fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event. Only in the hesitation between deciding which of those two applies can the fantastic be found. (Todorov, Tzvetan, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre 1973)

Gennadii Yepifanov's illustration to Queen of Spades (1966)
Fig.1 - Illustration by artist Gennady Yepifanov for Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, 1966.
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