The Blurred Lines of Fantastic Exploring Tzvetan Todorov's Framework in Edgar Allan Poe's The Oval Portrait and Robert Lous Stevenson's Olalla

Abstract

Fantastic literature has been regarded as one of the most controversial genres especially because of its broad spectrum and popularity. Many critics have various insights into the fantastic literature and Tzvetan Todorov is one of the prominent theorists because of the fact that his theory’s contribution to the area has been accepted since it has been put forward by him. His theory of fantastic has elements such as uncanny and marvelous and there are similarities and sharp boundaries between them. The fantastic is regarded as blurrier and more fragile when it comes to categorize a literary text as fantastic in Todorov’s terms. Olalla, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1885 is a novella which has elements like gothic atmosphere, strangeness, and potentiality for supernatural incidents with uncanny characters.  In these texts, a soldier who stays in a remote house as a guest in Spain, encounters family’s living members goes through strange incidents, while he tries to figure out the relationship between an old painting of the member of the family and its uncanny similarity to others. Because of the ambiguity of the plot, the story provides the reader a strong background to be analyzed through the lens of Todorov’s theory. Similarly, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Oval Portrait published in 1842 reflects the specialties of uncanny feelings and the Gothic literature. Also in this story, the narrative is shaped around an uncanny portrait of a lady which turns into a meta-story. In this paper, the similarities and differences between two stories in terms of their narrative styles and placement in fantastic sphere will be analysed under the light of Todorov’s theory of fantastic.