Fantastic Nuances

The (In)visible Ideology in the Imaginary Cities by Rhys Hughes, Mélanie Fazi and Ana Teresa Pereira

Abstract

The fantastic universes of Rhys Hughes, Mélanie Fazi and Ana T. Pereira lead the reader to a subversion of the current understanding of contemporary urban habits, in opposition to the idea that the fantastic plays a “defence of the status quo” (Monléon 1990). These three authors elaborate on how the fantastic “traces limits on cultural epistemological and ontological framings” (Jackson 1981). This epistemological aspect of the fantastic meets the epistemological dimension of the ideology (Eagleton 1991), because ideologies “are multilayered symbols of reality that brought together complex ideas” (Freeden 2003). The fantastic, with its absurd and unusual fictional universes, subverts the symbols of predictable cosmovisions. The purpose of this study is to examine the strategies and tools developed in order to ponder the ethical and ideological values in the short stories “Corneropolis” and “The City That Was Itsef” by R. Hughes, “La cité travestie” by M. Fazi and “A rua sem nome” by A. T. Pereira.