• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.25
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• pp.453-482
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• 2011

Until now and in the studying of fantastic literature, there has been likely to regard the character as secondary element, compared to their actions. However, it has to be recognized that the characters is a barometer to divide the boundary among the marvellous literature, or fantasy, magic realism, etc., in particular it is an important narrative element to understand an epistemological vision of fantastic literature. This thesis analyzes the characters, focusing on two dimensions divided such as between protagonist/antagonist and protagonist narrator/editor narrator. The characters in fantastic literature are usually set-up as people like ourselves, because it is necessary for the readers to consider the supernatural phenomenon as real world situation. The reason why many characters in fantastic literature usually meet a tragic end is that the structure of fantastic literature embedded unresolved supernatural confusion into ordinary order in the end, while antagonists are viewed as holders of extraordinariness and they are far from vero-similarity. Together with usual characters who represent the world of logic and reason, antagonists who seek to understand more about the universe totally and thus regarded as symbols of intuition and imagination and ultimately are the elements of fantastic literature. On the other hand, the "first person narrator" is divided between "protagonist narrator" who narrates the supernatural things through his/her own experience to readers and "editor narrator" who narrates the other's experiences. Particularly in the case of "editor narrator", he/she may narrates the stories with different explication and angle, which lead to hesitation and confusion for readers to identify between reality and unreality or natural logic and supernatural one. Even though there are various categories in fantastic literature, this thesis exclude 'neo fantastic', 'metaphysical fantastic' ones, characterized as a possibility of convergence with the secondary interpretation and symbolic implication. Beyond these materials, the literatures which involved with this thesis and analysis are normally related with traditional fantastic literary works which supernatural events intervene in real world and bring out collision between real and unreal, or natural and supernatural logics. Based on this criteria, this thesis chooses literary works such as "De los Reyes Futuros", "El Perjurio de la Nieve" written by Adolfo Bioy Casares who is a representative author in Latin American fantastic literature.