The Weird and the Fantastic: Genre in Theory and Genre as History

This article argues that rigid, essentializing genre definitions such as those often deployed to define the “fantastic” are not adequate for the study of genre, because they rely on a narrow range of textual strategies that cannot account for the diversity of “genre-markers” that may influence the reception of a work. The notion of the “weird,” imported to France after the emergence of the New Weird in the anglosphere at the turn of the twenty-first century, offers a much more expansive model for genre than older models of the “fantastic” and can accommodate, for example, “secondary” fantasy worlds that are typically excluded from definitions of the fantastic. The article argues that vague definitions are more suitable for the study of genres like the “weird” than precise ones, and that genre manifests particularly as an inscription of literary genealogy within texts, such as through intertextual “mythoi” such as the Cthulhu mythos or the Carcosa mythos. A genealogical approach to genre deemphasizes the work of “definition” in favor of lineage, which can allow hybrid forms to be easily accommodated without legislating genre-boundaries. Finally, the article situates the weird as an exciting trend in French and francophone literature of the last twenty years.