On the Italian Fantastic: Between Lexicography and Literary History

Abstract

The fantastic in literature has been discussed so thoroughly that any new paper on the subject may arouse suspicion of reworking the existing ideas. However, the aim of the present article is to fulfill a gap in the research into the fantastic literature, especially the Italian fantastic literature, and address a problem which has not been answered appropriately in this field of study. The previous research into the fantastic has almost always omitted the etymology, focusing only on the 19th-century literary origins of the term, whereas the present paper analyzes modern dictionary definitions of the term, traces the historical development of its meaning since the earliest recorded occurrence of the word in the Italian language, and finally examines minutely the Greek etymology of the word and collates it with the most recent meaning that the word acquired in the 19th century, namely fantastic as a literary term. The meticulous etymological analysis has allowed to shed light on surprising denotations and connotations of the word fantastic, which, although omitted in Italian dictionaries, remain to this day implicit in the role and the characteristics of this literature in Italy. The article is a contribution to the author’s research into the contemporary Italian fantastic novel. The arguments presented in this paper may confirm the author’s thesis that the fantastic literature, and above all the Italian one, tends to serve as a tool for commenting and interpreting the reality.