The Marvelous Story of Tahsin Karmiani's Severed HeadBy

Abstract

    The fantastic is neither a genre nor a new narrative technique. Rather, its roots extend back to ancient narratives, intertwining with them to the point where genre boundaries dissolve. Contemporary fiction has employed it to bridge its boundaries with literary and non-literary genres. From the womb of these narrative genres, such as myth and folk tales, new narrative genres have emerged, transforming the fantastic discourse, with its various techniques, into a comprehensive narrative art form that seeps into novels. One of the characteristics of the contemporary novel is its fantastical flavor, which is appropriate today for the complex and diverse discourses of life. The fantastic is an open genre, and the novel is more flexible and capable of diversifying discourses. Its use of the fantastic has made it a text brimming with new things.