The continuity of readings: Thematic approaches to the short fiction of Julio Cortazar.

Historically, literary critics have described the primary aesthetic technique of Julio Cortazar's short story writing as that of "the fantastic." This view of Cortazar derives from many of his works that portray a realistic world in which fantastic events such as demonic possession, immortality, and time travel are made possible. Cortazar's employment of "the fantastic," however, constitutes only one of several techniques through which the author challenges Western thinking about the nature of reality as informed by eighteenth-century empiricism. This project examines Cortazar's other aesthetic techniques---existentialist explorations, the portrayal of the oneiric, the cultivation of the exceptional, "figures," and the use of games---which over the course of his career replaced his trademark fantastic approach to short fiction.