Fantastic and phantasmatic in the prose and poetry of Vasile Voiculescu

Abstract Book of the 8th International Conference on Future of Social Sciences and Humanities

Year: 2026

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Fantastic and phantasmatic in the prose and poetry of Vasile Voiculescu

Andra Ionescu

ABSTRACT:

In my research I try to define a literary concept that contains the premises of an interdisciplinary theoretical approach. The theme of the study refers to the prose and poetry of the postmodern Romanian author Vasile Voiculescu whose texts will be reinterpreted through the concept of phantasmatic. The concept already named is emerged from the idea of the phantasma and from the fantastic domain. The phantasmatic is seen as a continuous transitional state of an internal image that is linked to the formation of the artistic language. The main theories that influenced the preparation of the phantasmatic are the definition of the phantasma stated by Aristotle, the narrative traits of the fantastic emphasized by Tzvetan Todorov and the philosophical perspective of Giorgio Agamben about artistic language and art as incomplete objects which reflect the permanent ontological void of an artist. In the narrative space the ambiguous vision is the narrative structure that intensifies the symbolic level, in the poetic space the ambivalent significance of the word indicates the contradiction that sustains the figurative phenomena of the artistic language. Both prose and poetry contain a discourse formed of hidden signs, an idea outlined by Ioan Petru Culianu when he analyzes the mystical texts from universal and theological literature.

Keywords: Absence; Ambiguity; Contradiction; Internal Image; Transition