Original scientific paper
Existentialist and phenomenological reading of the fantastic in Cortázar's short stories
Andrija Koštal
Abstract
The article provides an existentialist and phenomenological reading of the fantastic in Cortázar's short stories through a couple of interpretative interests which arise at the meeting point of these philosophical traditions and the author's short stories. Though the general influence of existentialism on Cortázar is well known, this article takes a closer look at the relevance of the concept of inauthenticity (inauthentic existence) for the understanding of Cortázar's stories. In that regard, the article focuses on different kinds of traps of inauthenticity Cortázar's characters fall into. Phenomenological section of the article considers the way in which some of Cortázar's most famous stories assert the problem of body – consciousness relation enabling us thus to observe some kind of transition from Husserl's to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology in their very same narratives. The last part of the article focuses on the way in which some of Cortázar's stories engage with phenomenological reading theory revealing its very limits at the same time.
Keywords
existentialism; fantastic; inauthenticity; phenomenology; reading theory
Hrčak ID:
230317
URI
Publication date:
18.12.2019.
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