Comparative Criticism. Volume 24

In this volume, Fantastic currencies in comparative literature: gothic to posmodern, the twenty-fourth of his yearbook and annual journal published by Cambridge since 1979, two essays on fiction and fortune, by Gillian Beer and Margaret Doody, and one on "gold and iron" by A.D.Nuttall, open the way to consideration of a major rediscovered European novel, The manuscript Found in Saragossa, by the polish novelist Jan Potocki, written in French 1797-1815. This rich novel, which uniquely incorporates , explores and plays off the opposite extremes of Englightenment rationality and Romantic emotion, was published only in part in the author´s lifetime. Plundered without acknowledgement by writers on the fantastic throughtout the nineteenth century, it was published in full only in 1989, translated into English in 1995, end is now compared by critics with Cervantes and Diderot, and in our time with Joyce and Borges.