SIGN AND SYMBOL IN FANTASTIC LITERATURE
SIGN AND SYMBOL IN FANTASTIC LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: In the article "Sign and Symbol in Fantastic Literature", it is debated the human need to escape from everyday reality. The fantastic arose out of people's passion “for happenings beyond nature" , but also as a consequence of the human capacity for representation and the fact that the determinant trait of homo sapiens seems to be that of a symbolic animal. A person does not live only in a physical universe, but also in a universe that can be imagined, in a symbolic universe, and language, myth, art, and religion belong to this universe. This ability to represent reality shows the essence of human thought. Imagination, the ability to fantasize, springs from the interior and is completed through the interaction of the individual with the world. Symbols establish a relationship with the universe, but they are also enriched by the contact they establish with each other, and this combination leads to the emergence of texts. The difference between the literary work and a part of it, represented by the fantastic work, is rendered by the relationship established between the landmarks of the so-called real universe, the mimetic universe, the one that respects the same laws as the real universe, and the fantastic universe, the one in which do not act the same laws as in the real universe. There is an extremely strong connection between the creative thinking of man and fantastic literature that expresses the individual's strength to imagine and describe a multitude of possible worlds.

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