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Forum for Modern Language Studies Advance Access originally published online on September 14, 2008
Forum for Modern Language Studies 2008 44(4):394-411; doi:10.1093/fmls/cqn051
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.

This article appears in the following Forum for Modern Language Studies issue: SPECIAL ISSUE: The Fantastic: An Enduring Literary Mode [View the issue table of contents]

From Hypotyposis to Metalepsis: Narrative Devices in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction

Fanfan Chen

Department of English & Doctoral Program of Comparative Literature
National Dong Hwa University
Taiwan

ffchen{at}mail.ndhu.edu.tw/chenfantasticism{at}gmail.com

  Abstract

Post-Todorovian fantastic discourse extends Todorov's argument concerning the significance of taking figurative meanings literally. His assumption that the supernatural is born of language is extended to mean "language creates reality" or language refers to "another possible reality" thanks to the animated hypotyposis and metalepsis. The extreme representation of hypotyposis often brings forth metalepsis, which underlies Gérard Genette's treatise on metalepsis: from figure to fiction. Metalepsis can be employed to effect transgression on three different levels: that of the author and his/her product, that of the diegetic story and the hypodiegetic story, and, finally, that of the reader and the work. Contemporary fantastic fiction, revolving as it often does around the theme of books and stories, takes the figure of hypotyposis literally in order to transgress diegetic frames. The represented reader, who exists on the diegetic level, thus interferes on a hypodiegetic level in the work he/she is reading, or the hypodiegetic characters come out of the work read by diegetic characters to interfere in the diegetic fictional world. This article attempts to examine the functioning of these three different modes in a variety of literary texts. Firstly, in subscribing to the fantastic tradition of hesitation, the narrative Möbius strip of ambiguity emerges on the threshold between hypotyposis and metalepsis. Secondly, as the diegetic fantastic story intrudes into the intradiegetic narration, the mise en abyme becomes metaleptic. And finally, the magic metalepsis of words that spins a fantastic diegetic world is intruded into by existences on a hypodiegetic level.

Key Words: fantastic narrative • metalepsis • hypotyposis • Genette, Gérard • mise en abyme • Möbius strip • imaginary book • figure • fiction


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