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<p>This paper proposes a cultural-psychological reading of Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic as enacted within Andrzej Sapkowski’s <i>Witcher</i> cycle - a corpus encompassing eight novels and a body of short fiction published between 1986 and 1999. Drawing on the intersection of cultural psychology, literary semiotics, and post-Jungian depth psychology, the study argues that the fantastic in the <i>Witcher</i> universe operates not merely as a narratological category - the hesitation between natural and supernatural explanations - but as a structured psychological borderland: a liminal space in which the human subject confronts, negotiates, and internalizes the meanings of monstrosity, otherness, and moral indeterminacy. By reading the central figure of Geralt of Rivia as a cultural-psychological subject stranded between ontological categories, and by examining the series’s systematic deconstruction of folk-tale archetypes, the paper demonstrates that Sapkowski’s fiction constitutes a profound meditation on the psychosocial construction of the Other, the vicissitudes of belonging in post-communist Central European imaginary, and the semiotic instability of boundaries that human cultures erect between self and not-self. The analysis engages Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, Zygmunt Bauman’s conceptualization of the stranger, and Homi Bhabha’s notion of the Third Space, positioning the <i>Witcher</i> cycle as a polyphonic cultural text that fundamentally challenges hegemonic epistemologies of the human. The conclusions suggest that fantastic literature, when read through a cultural-psychological lens, offers a generative site for understanding the human mind’s encounter with alterity and the constructed limits of category.</p>

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Between Monster and Human: The Fantastic as a Psychological Borderland in Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher Cycle

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月21日

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  • Abishek Asokan,
  • C. S. Arunprabu

摘要

This paper proposes a cultural-psychological reading of Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the fantastic as enacted within Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher cycle - a corpus encompassing eight novels and a body of short fiction published between 1986 and 1999. Drawing on the intersection of cultural psychology, literary semiotics, and post-Jungian depth psychology, the study argues that the fantastic in the Witcher universe operates not merely as a narratological category - the hesitation between natural and supernatural explanations - but as a structured psychological borderland: a liminal space in which the human subject confronts, negotiates, and internalizes the meanings of monstrosity, otherness, and moral indeterminacy. By reading the central figure of Geralt of Rivia as a cultural-psychological subject stranded between ontological categories, and by examining the series’s systematic deconstruction of folk-tale archetypes, the paper demonstrates that Sapkowski’s fiction constitutes a profound meditation on the psychosocial construction of the Other, the vicissitudes of belonging in post-communist Central European imaginary, and the semiotic instability of boundaries that human cultures erect between self and not-self. The analysis engages Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, Zygmunt Bauman’s conceptualization of the stranger, and Homi Bhabha’s notion of the Third Space, positioning the Witcher cycle as a polyphonic cultural text that fundamentally challenges hegemonic epistemologies of the human. The conclusions suggest that fantastic literature, when read through a cultural-psychological lens, offers a generative site for understanding the human mind’s encounter with alterity and the constructed limits of category.