The presence of fantastic elements in Su Tong's short stories

This paper analyses a part of Su Tong’s rich narrative production, focusing on some of his less known short stories, written between 1989 and 1998, in which we find supernatural and strange presences such as ghosts, spirits, demons, monsters and angels, in a world which is nevertheless entirely immersed in everyday reality. Although the wonderful and fantastic have always existed in the Chinese literary tradition, after Realism established itself in the second half of the 20th century, the supernatural and the fantastic disappeared in literature, since the political directives allowed no room for imagination. In the eighties, we find a return to the fantastic in literature, explained by some scholars as a way to introduce phantasmagorical dimension within the real, while others consider the presence of fantastic elements in contemporary novels and short stories as a sort of reaction to modernity, understood as ideological standardization. I propose an analysis of Su Tong’s short stories based on Tzvetan Torodov’s theory of the fantastic literature, arguing that the use of fantastic in Su Tong’s narrative works is not aimed to subvert conventions accepted as canons, but it mostly expresses his will to affirm his creative freedom and pursue his interest in thematic and stylistic experimentation.