Like parody and nonsense, fantasy questions the basis of a known reality. Fantasy is a “flirtation with limits of sense-making” and – with a friendly wink to Alice in Wonderland – “the mirror that sucks the body in” (Shires 1988, 267-268). The effect produced by fantasy has also been described as a “wildly abandoning experience of viewing oneself in a distorting mirror at the circus funhouse for the first time” or, in other words, as ecstasis in sense of the Greek meaning of the term: as “standing outside oneself” (Shires 1988, 268).
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