Preliminary notations concerning the relation ship between fantastic literature and context

Abstract

Fantastic literature is commonly understood as the transgression of an established order and, in its turn, it is also one of the literary genres that better underline social and cultural backgrounds. This paper recalls the beginnings of Fantastic Literature in the Southern Cone (Argentina and Uruguay), taking two representative authors as a particular reference: they are Leopoldo Lugones and Horacio Quiroga. Fantastic literature is used by them as an instrument capable of shaking the very foundations of traditional European logics, therefore transgressing the established order that controls their societies and underlining “other ways” of understanding their very reality (the context). In Lugones and Quiroga (as latter in Borges and Cortázar), the fantastic undermines actual reality by means of structuring the transgression of European logics and rationality, which are a result of modernity.

Keywords

• Realidad real
• literatura fantástica
• suceso fantástico
• Leopoldo Lugones y Horacio Quiroga.