The Dreadful Credibility of Absurd Things: A Tendency in Fantasy Theory

Although it is unclear whether, by ‘fantasy’, Butler intends a narrow deŽnition (generic fantasy, i.e., imitation Tolkien heroic or epic fantasy and sword ’n’ sorcery) or a broad deŽnition (the fantastic genres, i.e., generic fantasy, sf (science Žction), horror, supernatural gothic, magic realism, etc.), such statistics nonethless make the need for a Marxist theory – or preferably, Marxist theories – of the fantastic selfevident. The last twenty or thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion in the study of fantastic texts and genres. Literary studies has embraced the gothic, fairy tales and sf, and screen studies has developed a complex critique of horror and is now beginning