Talk:Fantastique

Untitled
Certain Anglophone writers are now using the term "fantastique" to describe their work. The most prominent of them is Clive Barker. He wrote an essay somewhere that eloquently expresses the essence of fantastique; could some Barker fan dig it up?

In fact, there would be an interesting postscript on the influence of French fantastique upon foreign literature. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is an obvious case, and Huysman is alluded to in the text. I think a case can be made for Fantastique influence on Borgès, as well-- though as he'd read EVERYTHING, one could make a case for any influence on him. Rhinoracer 10:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

???????? What happened to the discussion on this page? Has it been archived? If so, where? Has someone arbitrarily wiped it? Rhinoracer 10:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I am a Sorbonne-trained scholar and an expert on the genre with several authoritative books on the subject; I also wrote the page, so my credentials on this topic are as good or better than yours. Your considerations about the Church's rationale and actions vis à vis the various tales and legends that evolved into fantasy during the Middle Ages are interesting but ultimately are theories. (As evidenced by your use of "likely" and other modifiers.) Other experts (including myself) disagree with your opinion. My views of the Church's role is far more negative than yours. I was admittedly wrong to have included my own bias when I wrote the entry originally, but you are equally wrong to continue to want to include yours. One could develop a new paragraph with both a pro- and anti-Church content, but ultimately, because I feel this is only a marginal issue, I would rather remove it entirely. JMLofficier 16:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer an entire removal to biased misinformation. My writing was unbiased and was written from, I believe, a neutral perspective. JMLofficier's comment that his 'views of the Church's role is [sic] far more negative than' mine is a courageous indication of his own bias, one which I in my writing have tried to avoid: a statement of fact from textual and sociological evidence rather than 'pro-' or 'anti-Church content'. The subject of the article is the Fantastique, not the Church, and as such the development of the Fantastique should be kept in mind. My point is that it is important to consider the beginnings of this 'genre' and to discuss its development through a period when belief and custom was in a more or less rapid period of change in Europe, and that the effects of these beliefs and customs, and indeed what these are, should be taken into consideration; this should be done by a thorough, neutral consideration of the original sources and not through a variously biased early twenty-first century anti-Church perspective.PETF 23:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't follow?
"Some theorists of literature, such as Tzvetan Todorov, contend that the fantastique is defined by its hesitation between accepting the supernatural as such and trying to rationally explain the phenomena it describes. In that case, the fantastique is nothing more than a transitional area on a spectrum from magic realism to fantasy and does not qualify as a separate literary genre." Doesn't "trying to rationally explain the [fantastique]" make realism, rather than fantasy, the other end of the spectrum? Both realism and fantasy present 'consistent' worlds, but 'rational explanation' seems to me to evoke associations with realism in the first place. Whichiswhich 15:42, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Fantastique vs fantastic
Is this a different genre from the Fantastic? From reading the article I get the strong impression that it is, but the "Definition" sections cites work by Todorov which is definitely referring to the Fantastic. If the two are the same the articles need merging. If not, some major cleanup and explanation needs to be done. I'm happy to help, but I'm totally lost trying to untangle what belongs in which article. Please help me if you can shed any light on this! —Noiratsi (talk) 11:09, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The article was definitely not clear enough about the difference. I added more explanations and extensive references. Fantastique in the French critical tradition has a really precise definition (the intrusion of supernatural into reality and incertainty), however fantastic in the English critical tradition is almost always used as synonym of fantasy. Feirodenn (talk) 20:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

"Revolt of the Angels" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Revolt of the Angels. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 16 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 22:38, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Merge Fantastic into Fantastique. As already been said many times on this page and on Talk:Fantastic, the terms refer to the same genre of fiction and both articles actually describe the same thing – it is a predominantly French subcategory of supernatural fiction, where elements between realism and non-existence are brought into question. It's a concept originally proposed by Todorov and then also discussed by other writers (check Russian article about the same genre: ru:Общелитературная фантастика). It is worth pointing out that in Eastern Europe, the term "fantastic" is used instead of "speculative fiction" and actually has exactly the same meaning and purpose (to group fantasy, sci-fi and horror). Therefore the terminology on wikidata is now basically messed up after incorrect edits in 2021: 1 & 2. So I think it's better to keep the French term as the main one, but mention both in the premise. Solidest (talk) 02:24, 16 January 2023 (UTC)


 * The article on fantastic deals with many English-language works that have nothing to do with the French tradition. To merge that article into one titled Fantastique would be misleading. On the contrary, the article on the francophone tradition would be better suited to merge into a broader article with an English-language title. Flameoguy (talk) 18:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Support merging, though I'd prefer to see it merged into Fantastic as academically, the concept is heavily used globally, with an especially strong research ongoing in Latin America that the article currently doesn't cover (ex. Ana María Barrenechea, Ensayo de una tipologia de la literatura fantástica, 1972; Rosalba Campra, Territorios de la ficción – lo fantástico, 2000). The definition of the fantastic was changed and developed a bit from the French original as most of the so-called "magical realist" fiction of LatAm conflicted with Todorov's original definition and fell into a limbo, as Todorov's original theory didn't take it into account. As an English-language wiki, the Fantastic title would be neutral in presenting a global view of the subject, while the french Fantastique would need a higher bar to fit the wiki's policy of following most of the reputable sources's naming, as many academic sources in LatAm use Fantástico or Fantastico, in line with using "Fantastic" in an english wiki article. Regardless, the merge would be highly positive. YuriNikolai (talk) 21:39, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Speaking of global, you only consider Latin America, ignoring the fact that Eastern Europe by the term "fantastic" means a very different thing. I did a redistribution of speculative fiction articles by their content six months ago, and you can look now at the article titles here: . Apart from eastern Europe, this also predominantly applies to central Europe, middle Asia and a bit of northern Europe. Based on this alone it is already incorrect to call "fantastic" a global labelling of the "fantastique" concept. Latin America is more of a special case where they use "fantástico", as, for example, the Italian article it:Fantastico describes speculative fiction. By the way the Spanish wiki also calls it by the French word: es:Fantastique. Solidest (talk) 12:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * So I rather think that Fantastic (disambiguation) should be moved to "Fantastic" instead, stating that it could mean either "speculative fiction" or "fantastique" (btw, there's also Fantastic art). Solidest (talk) 12:47, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * What says would be my choice.  As it stands, the Fantastique article sucks, but it is needed.  Unfortunately, it requires an entire re-write, and a split-out of the numerous lists it contains. This is a case where  TNT is truly in order. If not, then I favor the merge.  GenQuest  "scribble" 14:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Fantastique vs French fantasy
The word "fantastique" has a really precise definition in the French literary critical tradition, and the "History" part of the article was using the word as just a fancy way to say "French fantasy". I completed the definitions, I explaned the differences between the French concept of fantastique and the English word fantastic with references for every idea. But I had to remove a big part of the history as it had nothing to do with the concept of fantastique. It was mostly a history of French fantasy literature. Reusing this content still accessible in the article history (before my changes of the article) for creating a new article titled "French Fantasy" could be a good idea though. However, extensive references would have to be added for it to be accepted. Feirodenn (talk) 20:42, 9 December 2023 (UTC)