What exactly is the fantastic? In the twentieth-century world, our notions of what is impossible are assaulted every day. To define the nature of fantasy and the fantastic, Eric S. Rabkin considers its role in fairy tales, science fiction, detective stories, and religious allegory, as well as in traditional literature. The examples he studies range from Grimm's fairy tales to Agatha Christie, from Childhood's End to the novels of Henry James, from Voltaire to Robbe-Grillet to A Canticle for Leiboivitz. By analyzing different works of literature, the author shows that the fantastic depends on a reversal of the ground rules of a narrative world. This reversal signals most commonly a psychological escape, often from boredom, to an unknown world secretly yearned for, whose order, although reversed, bears a precise relation to reality. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Description: Stories contains a variety of extremely high quality narratives and makes their interconnections and study accessible. In comparison to similar anthologies, Stories has more total pieces (137), and more lengthy novellas (5). It presents graphic narratives, verse narratives, Bible stories, fairy tales, non-Western teaching tales, pre- Renaissance classics, and children's literature along with many selections by women and minority authors, and stories from around the world...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: A singular collection of short stories unveiling aspects of the human condition

Book by Rabkin, Eric S., Silverman, Eugene M.

Seventeen essays discuss Nineteen Eighty-Four, novels about the future, the ways people view the future, and the nature of history

Product Description: These 16 essays from the fifth annual J. Lloyd Eaton Conference at the Univer­sity of California, Riverside, seek to come to grips with science fiction’s core, the core at which “science must ulti­mately seem to outweigh the fiction...read more

Essays discuss science fiction, animated, and horror films, medieval romances, and musical fantasies, and their themes, special effects, and directors

Essays examine the themes, literary techniques, and social aspects of the science fiction and fantasy writings of authors, such as Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein

Analyzes the treatment of the theme of the world's destruction in the science fiction writings of authors, such as H.G. Wells, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Blish

Covers fantastic narrative from ancient myths to modern science fiction in more than fifty tales which represent man's imagination in etiology, entertainment, and wonder