The Fantastique is anchored in a reality where the world is ordered according to laws and rules that are understandable and unchangeable. The world is predictable. Indeed, the fantastic is not in a world where there are miracles and the irrational. That is why he couldn't be born before the nineteenth century, a "period without beliefs", a time where everything is explained by reason: the movement of atoms to the movements of the stars, through the heart and mind.
At its birth in the early nineteenth century, American literature is strongly influenced by the English Gothic novel and the fantastic. Nathaniel Hawthorne, then Washington Irving, and especially Edgar Allan Poe are examples of authors of fantastic stories. H. P. Lovecraft gives him a particular tour, closer to horror. Lovecraft will inspire many twentieth-century authors, including Stephen King.
The fantastic can be used in different genres like detective, sci-fi, horror, storytelling, romance, adventure, or even wonderful itself.
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It's based on the intrusion of the supernatural into every day, into reality. This intrusion is perceived as a violation of the universal laws on which society, nature, and the world are based.
Attention doesn't confuse the fantastic with the wonderful. In the marvelous, there is no obstacle to a fairy or a jinn intervene in the life of the hero: it's expected in this universe because we are in the world of "once upon a time", while the fantastic is anchored in reality.
This is what Hoffmann's Tales brought back, which seduced the French romantic imagination. The hero is the man who lives two blocks away, the heroine is the woman we met at the supermarket. Thus the authors of fantastic stories use the same techniques as realistic or naturalistic authors to give the impression of likelihood.
Often, too, the narrator is an "I" that is associated with the author. We feel that we are always in the right. Fantasy presents itself as actual, opposing the "here and now" to the "elsewhere" and the indefinite time of the tale.
Fantastique particularly likes certain themes such as possession, madness, hallucinations, dreams and everything about the afterlife or other subjects where creatures like ghosts, vampires, demons are present. The night is a privileged place of action, as are the cemeteries where the fog is, the so-called haunted mansions and forests on a full moon night. We search for places where perception can be altered, where surprise and the unknown can spring at any moment. Fantastique creates tension, evoking fear and suspense.
