Maupassant et le realisme fantastique

Generally labelled as fantastic in nature, Maupassant's short stories pose a serious problem. The very term "fantastic" is itself highly ambiguous; there have been many attemps to define what makes a work of literature "fantastic" in nature, but none of these attempts have managed to capture the essence of the genre in its entirety.What is most striking in Maupassant's narratives is precisely his rejection of the fantastic almost as soon as it occurs. Contrary to the more traditional literature of the fantastic, his narratives remain anchored in a realistic world, rendering the reader's experience even more unsettling. In a sense, Maupassant manages to tame the fantastic by normalizing it.We intend, therefore, to position our work at the meeting point of these two concepts---realism and fantasy---in order to determine if the definition of "fantastic realism" we will be striving for can be verified through our analysis of the following stories: "Apparition", "La chevelure", "Le Horla" (first version), "La main", "La peur", "Magnetisme" and "Sur 1'eau". (Abstract shortened by UMI.