Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712-1831

Download or read book Critical Discourses of the Fantastic, 1712-1831 written by David Sandner and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the idea that fantastic literature emerged in the Romantic period, Sandner shows that fantastic tales were popular throughout the eighteenth century. Reading fiction and criticism by Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley and Walter Scott, among others, Sandner argues that the fantastic functions as a discourse of the sublime imagination and thereby redefines the antecedents of the fantastic.