ABSTRACT
Before a reader can be prompted to hesitate, she must be encouraged to believe. If a reader is to respond with uncertainty to an apparently supernatural event, she needs to have been persuaded previously that the world she is observing is essentially natural. This opening chapter takes these two fundamental strands of the fantastic, believability and hesitation, as its basis. It investigates the dual methods used in fantastic narratives to convince the reader of this resemblance. The chapter specifically discusses the provocation of hesitation once the natural status of the fictional world has been established. It specifically challenges Todorov's contention that third-person narrators are ill-suited to the fantastic by examining uncertainty in the heterodiegetic context. The chapter reveals the ways in which elements of syntax and techniques of narrative can be combined to problematize the status of fictional events and the reader's interpretation of them.
