fantastic marvelous uncanny

I've determined that, according to Todorov's schema of the uncanny, the marvelous, and the fantastic, I am uncanny.

That is, I am "readily accounted for by the laws of reason, but...in one way or another, incredible, extraordinary, shocking, singular, disturbing or unexpected".

If you haven't been sitting around reading literary theory on the beach, I'll remind you that his marvelous is that which is impossible according to the laws of reason, but treated as reasonable (talking animals in fairy tales), and his fantastic is that which maintains uncertainty whether it is rationally explicable or not.

You could argue that I'm fantastic (feel free) since the cause of the phenomenon currently remains unresolved, but fantastic/uncanny -- unresolved but pointing towards the unusual rational -- is more convincing.

All of which would make a great quiz meme, if I knew how to make them.

I'm reading Terry Heller's The Delights of Terror as novel research. I don't really like his definitions of terror and horror, as fear for oneself and fear for others. They don't seem to me to get at the distinction.

I realized, though, that this novel tends towards the fantastic, that is, the unresolved/unresolvable, though it might be closer to say that it resolves towards both the uncanny and the marvelous -- some things appear to have rational explanations and some appear to have supernatural ones.

Which is interesting to me, anyway.

{rf}