Negative Language and Apophatic Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Fantastic Literature

• Irene Bulla ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Oklahoma

     University of Oklahoma

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, ISSN 0016-6928, ISSN-e 2160-0228, Vol. 56, Nº. 3, 2023, págs. 265-281
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article analyzes the rhetoric of nineteenth-century fantastic fiction in order to situate the genre within the intellectual tradition of apophatic, or self-negating, discourse. Through a reading of Fitz-James O'Brien's “What Was It? A Mystery” (1859) and Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing” (1893), two short stories that feature the same kind of supernatural phenomenon (a material ghost), the essay argues that apophasis can be used as a key to understand not only the rhetorical fabric of the fantastic genre but also its tropes and themes and its larger epistemological preoccupations.