"... carving up fantasy and the fantastic and jamming its literature into a series of
discrete, neatly labelled boxes kills literature dead. So much ground has been lost in
comparison with other fields of literary criticism while critics of fantasy have been futilely
squabbling over whether a text is marvellous or fabulous, or how to subdivide science
fiction into space opera or sword and sorcery.” (2000, 13)
Indeed, it would be helpful if Armitt were to be a bit more specific regarding which “ground” has
been won in which “other fields of literary criticism,” and which critics have actually been
“futilely squabbling” over correct narrative genre classification; given the direction post
structuralist criticism has taken over the last three decades and its open despise for defining
either literature or literary genres, Armitt seems to be pointing to a non-existent debate. As to
considering generic classification, that is “jamming literature into a series of discrete, neatly
labelled boxes,” as an activity that “kills literature dead,” it might be just a matter of opinion.
Guy de Maupassant published a chronicle in 1883, entitled “Le Fantastique,” in which he
attempted to distinguish the modern fantastic from the traditional marvelous; should we then
infer that the author of “The Horla” was attempting to “kill literature dead?” If pres sed to choose
a side, we might be tempted to pick Maupassant over Armitt and admit, along with one of the
major figures of French literature, the need for discerning the fantastic from other narrative
categories, which do not fulfill the same aesthetic function, nor are intended to elicit the same
type of reception. It would appear that, on the contrary, it is the very definition of any narrative
genre or mode that would “kill the critic dead,” for, by voluntary preserving a widely open and
ultimately highly indeterminate notion, scholars grant themselves a nearly unlimited scope of
study which allows for endless speculations. If Armitt were to distinguish the fantastic from the
marvelous, science fiction or magical realism, there would indeed be very little left of
Contemporary Women’s Fiction and the Fantastic. In the final analysis, there seems to be a
fundamental logical flaw at the core of Armitt’s position, which points to an irresolvable
contradiction: indeed, how can one study a definite narrative genre while simultaneously
denying the possibility of its definition? Just as in her previous work, appropriately entitled
Theorising the Fantastic, Armitt falls into the post-structural “literary” theoretical temptation,
and favors abstract, over-conceptualized and polysemic speculations over empirical research
and functional concepts, which, instead of deepening our understanding of a specific narrative
occurrence - the fantastic - contributes to further un-define it.
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