(In)verosímil e fantástico ou a arte de provocar o medo

Child of the Enlightenment, fantastic literature refuses both the lack of truthlikeness of imaginary fiction and the Aristotelian verisimilitude present in classical and realistic literature. Real and unreal mingle together, originating anxiety, mystery and anguish. Deprived from God, human reality is perceived as puzzling and disturbing. To provoke anguish and fear in the reader, fantastic fiction makes use of ambiguity in the presentation of the meta-empirical phenomenon, by inserting on a real and likely frame of reference something scandalously unlikely, which sets the paradox on the frames of reference of the known world. How to explain the event? The answers here studied given by Crébillon, Baudelaire or Maupassant differ. However, after Todorov, it is accepted that imaginary fiction believes in supernatural, science fiction develops a fantasy based on the rational powers of science and strange fiction finds a rational solution. In fantastic fiction – built from uncertainty and ambiguity – hesitation, perplexity, anguish and fear must remain