Multimodality and scenography in four editions of the Antologia da Literatura Fantástica

Abstract

Using some concepts from Maingueneau’s (2006) analysis of literary discourse and Elleström’s (2010) studies on media modalities, this work aims to offer an overview of four different editions of the Antología de la Literatura Fantástica (ALF), originally organized by Silvina Ocampo, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges. It is meaningful that every time a different house publishes the ALF it acquires a new, unique form, with specific textual, paratextual, graphic and material characteristics. All these aspects are bound to the object and reveal, inevitably, traces of how the literary discourse functions, and it is, thus, possible to state that every editorial object articulates in itself a scenography that may reveal editorial imaginaries on what Fantastic Literature is, and how it should be read. In order to discuss that statement, four editions of the ALF are analyzed: the first one, published by Editorial Sudamericana in Argentina, 1940; an edition by Xanadu Publications, from the United Kingdom, 1988; one from the Argentinian Debolsillo, 2016; and one from the Brazilian publishing house Cosac Naify, 2014. Each one of them shows how the literary text is not merely the product of a single author, but a result of a very complex process that involves a series of other mediators: editors, designers, other authors, etc.