The Romantic Fantastic by Tobin Siebers (review)

Book Reviews Tobin Siebers. T h e R o m a n t ic F a n t a s t ic . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Pp. 194. $22.50. This addition to the growing number of recent works treating fantastic literature takes as its point of departure the notion of superstition as an underlying logic rather than a sim­ ple thematic element of texts generally classed as fantastic. To demonstrate the efficacy of his approach, Professor Siebers draws examples from French, American, Russian and Ger­ man literature of the nineteenth century, including detailed treatments of James’ “ The Turn of the Screw,” Mérimée’s “ La Vénus d ’llle,” Gogol’s “ The Overcoat,” Tolstoy’s “ Kholstomer,” Hoffmann’s “ Princess Brambilla” and "Little Zaches, surnamed Zinnober ,” and three tales by Hawthorne: “ Alice Doane’s Appeal,” “ The Gentle Boy” and “ Ethan Brand,” as well as a wealth of less extensive discussions of works of fantastic fic­ tion and relevant Romantic theory, such as writings of Nodier and Baudelaire. Along with the textual analyses are a number of critiques of some modern approaches to romanticism and the fantastic, notably those of Tzvétan Todorov and Paul de Man, whose structuralist studies (The Fantastic and “ The Rhetoric of Temporality,” respectively) receive rather harsh treatment here in chapters on “ Literature and Superstition” and “ Figurative Language and the Fantastic.” Although of interest, the attention given to others’ critical blind spots, reminiscent of Todorov’s own attack on Northrop Frye’s Anatom y o f Criticism in The Fantastic, seems somewhat excessive. This is a minor drawback, far outweighed by the book’s positive contributions. Among them, Siebers’ sociological analysis of the function of superstition as logic is certainly one of the most useful. Viewed as an agent of social cohesion rather than a collection of unrelated notions, superstition “ serves to differentiate one element in a conflict by repre­ senting it as exterior or alien” (p. 40). From this perspective, fantastic literature does not merely contain elements of the supernatural, but reflects superstitious patterns of thought, which seek to “ make strange” that which is perceived as a threat. Of nearly equal signifi­ cance is his highlighting of reactions to violence and repression among both Rationalist and Romantic writers in their appraisals of superstition and religious belief, particularly in pieand post-Revolutionary France. Influenced by René Girard’s analysis of violence and the role of the victim, Siebers effectively characterizes the Romantics’ tendency toward self­ alienation as an attempt to avoid or contain the exclusionary violence of their predecessors as expressed in the Revolution. Rather than accuse and victimize those whom they see as different, they cast themselves as strange, and therefore victims of society at large. This tac­ tic simply reverses the terms in the same dynamic of accusation and exclusion. Siebers also draws an illuminating parallel between the functioning of irony and that of the fantastic, both of which operate in an accusatory fashion to make acceptable the ridicule and/or expulsion of their objects, seen as “ other” thanks to the ironic or fantastic treatment accorded them. The final chapter offers a somewhat hasty summary of some current critical thought on madness in its final section, including the allusion to Derrida expected since the first sen­ tence of the preface in which Siebers described the fantastic as “ perhaps the supreme litera­ ture of difference” (p. 9), a dominant world-view which, as he concludes, seeks to present itself as marginal. D e b o r a h V a n I d e r s t i n e T r a a s Michigan State University VOL.XXVIII, NO.3 8 9 ...