Over the millennia of cultural development, humanity has created countless literary works, among which we can distinguish some basic types, similar in the way and form of reflecting a person’s ideas about the world around him. These are three types (or types) of literature: epic, drama, lyric.

What is different about each type of literature?

Epic as a type of literature

Epic(epos - Greek, narrative, story) is a depiction of events, phenomena, processes external to the author. Epic works reflect the objective course of life, human existence as a whole. Using various artistic means, the authors of epic works express their understanding of historical, socio-political, moral, psychological and many other problems that live with human society in general and each of its representatives in particular. Epic works have significant visual potential, thereby helping the reader to understand the world around them and comprehend the deep problems of human existence.

Drama as a genre of literature

Drama(drama - Greek, action, performance) is a type of literature, main feature which is the scenic quality of the works. Plays, i.e. dramatic works are created specifically for the theater, for production on stage, which, of course, does not exclude their existence in the form of independent literary texts intended for reading. Like the epic, drama reproduces the relationships between people, their actions, and the conflicts that arise between them. But unlike the epic, which is narrative in nature, drama has a dialogical form.

Related to this features of dramatic works :

2) the text of the play consists of conversations between the characters: their monologues (the speech of one character), dialogues (a conversation between two characters), polylogues (simultaneous exchange of remarks by several participants in the action). That is why speech characterization turns out to be one of the most important means of creating a memorable character of a hero;

3) the action of the play, as a rule, develops quite dynamically, intensively, as a rule, it is allocated 2-3 hours of stage time.

Lyrics as a type of literature

Lyrics(lyra - Greek, musical instrument, to the accompaniment of which poetic works and songs were performed) is distinguished by a special type of construction of an artistic image - this is an image-experience in which the individual emotional and spiritual experience of the author is embodied. Lyrics can be called the most mysterious type of literature, because it is addressed to the inner world of a person, his subjective feelings, ideas, and ideas. In other words, a lyrical work serves primarily the individual self-expression of the author. The question arises: why do readers, i.e. other people turn to such works? The whole point is that the lyricist, speaking on his own behalf and about himself, miraculously embodies universal human emotions, ideas, hopes, and the more significant the author’s personality, the more important his individual experience is for the reader.

Each type of literature also has its own system of genres.

Genre(genre - French genus, type) is a historically established type of literary work that has similar typological features. Genre names help the reader navigate the vast sea of ​​literature: some people love detective stories, others prefer fantasy, and still others are a fan of memoirs.

How to determine What genre does a particular work belong to? Most often, the authors themselves help us in this, calling their creation a novel, story, poem, etc. However, some author’s definitions seem unexpected to us: let us remember that A.P. Chekhov emphasized that “The Cherry Orchard” is a comedy, and not a drama at all, but A.I. Solzhenitsyn considered One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to be a story, not a novella. Some literary scholars call Russian literature a collection of genre paradoxes: the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, the prose poem “Dead Souls”, the satirical chronicle “The History of a City”. There was a lot of controversy regarding “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy. The writer himself said only about what his book is not: “What is War and Peace? This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. “War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.” And only in the 20th century did literary scholars agree to call brilliant creation L.N. Tolstoy's epic novel.

Each literary genre has a number of stable characteristics, knowledge of which allows us to classify a specific work into one group or another. Genres develop, change, die out and are born, for example, literally before our eyes, a new genre of blog (web loq) - a personal online diary - has emerged.

However, for several centuries there have been stable (also called canonical) genres.

Literature of literary works - see table 1).

Table 1.

Genres of literary works

Epic genres of literature

Epic genres are primarily distinguished by their volume; on this basis they are divided into small ( essay, story, short story, fairy tale, parable ), average ( story ), large ( novel, epic novel ).

Feature article- a small sketch from life, the genre is both descriptive and narrative. Many essays are created on a documentary, life basis, often they are combined into cycles: the classic example is “A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy” (1768) by the English writer Laurence Sterne, in Russian literature it is “A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1790) A Radishcheva, “Frigate Pallada” (1858) by I. Goncharov” “Italy” (1922) by B. Zaitsev and others.

Story- a small narrative genre, which usually depicts one episode, incident, human character, or an important incident in the life of the hero that influenced his future fate (“After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy). Stories are created both on a documentary, often autobiographical basis (“Matryonin’s Dvor” by A. Solzhenitsyn) and through pure fiction (“The Gentleman from San Francisco” by I. Bunin).

The intonation and content of the stories can be very different - from comic, curious (early stories of A.P. Chekhov) to deeply tragic (Kolyma Stories by V. Shalamov). Stories, like essays, are often combined into cycles (“Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev).

Novella(novella Italian news) is in many ways akin to a short story and is considered its variety, but is distinguished by the special dynamism of the narrative, sharp and often unexpected turns in the development of events. Often the narrative in a short story begins with the ending and is built according to the law of inversion, i.e. reverse order, when the denouement precedes the main events (“Terrible Revenge” by N. Gogol). This feature of the construction of the novella will later be borrowed by the detective genre.

The word “novella” has another meaning that future lawyers need to know. IN Ancient Rome the phrase “novellae leges” (new laws) was used to refer to laws introduced after the official codification of law (after the publication of the Code of Theodosius II in 438). The novellas of Justinian and his successors, published after the second edition of the Justinian Code, later formed part of the code of Roman laws (Corpus iuris civillis). In the modern era, a novel is a law submitted to parliament (in other words, a draft law).

Fairy tale- the most ancient of the small epic genres, one of the main ones in the oral creativity of any people. This is a small work of a magical, adventurous or everyday nature, where fiction is clearly emphasized. Another important feature of a folk tale is its edifying nature: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, good fellows lesson". Folk tales are usually divided into fairy tales (“The Tale of the Frog Princess”), everyday ones (“Porridge from an Ax”) and tales about animals (“Zayushkina’s Hut”).

With development written literature Literary fairy tales arise in which traditional motifs and symbolic possibilities of folk tales are used. The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is rightfully considered a classic of the genre of literary fairy tales, his wonderful “The Little Mermaid”, “The Princess and the Pea”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Steadfast tin soldier", "Shadow", "Thumbelina" are loved by many generations of readers, both very young and quite mature. And this is far from accidental, because Andersen’s fairy tales are not only extraordinary and sometimes strange adventures of heroes, they contain a deep philosophical and moral meaning contained in beautiful symbolic images.

Among European literary fairy tales of the 20th century, The Little Prince (1942) by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry became a classic. And the famous “Chronicles of Narnia” (1950 - 1956) by the English writer Cl. Lewis and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-1955), also by the Englishman J.R. Tolkien, are written in the fantasy genre, which can be called a modern transformation of an ancient folk tale.

In Russian literature, of course, the fairy tales of A.S. remain unsurpassed. Pushkin: “About the dead princess and seven heroes”, “About the fisherman and the fish”, “About Tsar Saltan...”, “About the golden cockerel”, “About the priest and his worker Balda”. An excellent storyteller was P. Ershov, the author of “The Little Humpbacked Horse.” E. Schwartz in the 20th century creates the form of fairy tale plays, one of them “The Bear” (another name is “An Ordinary Miracle”) is well known to many thanks to the wonderful film directed by M. Zakharov.

Parable- also a very ancient folklore genre, but, unlike fairy tales, parables contained written monuments: the Talmud, the Bible, the Koran, the monument of Syrian literature “Teachings of Akahara”. A parable is a work of instructive, symbolic nature, distinguished by sublimity and seriousness of content. Ancient parables, as a rule, are small in volume, they do not contain detailed story about events or psychological characteristics of the hero’s character.

The purpose of the parable is edification or, as they once said, teaching wisdom. In European culture, the most famous parables from the Gospels are: prodigal son, about the rich man and Lazarus, about the unrighteous judge, about the crazy rich man and others. Christ often spoke to his disciples allegorically, and if they did not understand the meaning of the parable, he explained it.

Many writers turned to the genre of parables, not always, of course, investing in it a high religious meaning, but rather trying to express in an allegorical form some kind of moralistic edification, such as, for example, L. Tolstoy in his late work. Carry it. V. Rasputin - Farewell to Matera" can also be called an expanded parable, in which the writer speaks with anxiety and sorrow about the destruction of the "ecology of conscience" of man. Many critics also consider the story “The Old Man and the Sea” by E. Hemingway to be part of the tradition of literary parables. The famous contemporary Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho also uses the parable form in his novels and stories (the novel “The Alchemist”).

Tale- a medium literary genre, widely represented in world literature. The story depicts several important episodes from the hero's life, usually one storyline and a small number of characters. The stories are characterized by great psychological intensity; the author focuses on the experiences and changes in mood of the characters. Often main theme The love of the protagonist becomes the story, for example, “White Nights” by F. Dostoevsky, “Asya” by I. Turgenev, “Mitya’s Love” by I. Bunin. Stories can also be combined into cycles, especially those written on autobiographical material: “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” by L. Tolstoy, “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities” by A. Gorky. The intonations and themes of the stories are extremely diverse: tragic, addressing acute social and moral issues (“Everything Flows” by V. Grossman, “House on the Embankment” by Yu. Trifonov), romantic, heroic (“Taras Bulba” by N. Gogol), philosophical , parables (“The Pit” by A. Platonov), mischievous, comic (“Three in a Boat, Not Counting the Dog” by the English writer Jerome K. Jerome).

Novel(gotap French originally, in the late Middle Ages, any work written in a Romance language, as opposed to those written in Latin) is a major epic work in which the narrative is focused on the fate of an individual. The novel is the most complex epic genre, which is distinguished by an incredible number of themes and plots: love, historical, detective, psychological, fantasy, historical, autobiographical, social, philosophical, satirical, etc. All these forms and types of the novel are united by its central idea - the idea of ​​personality, human individuality.

The novel is called the epic of private life because it depicts the diverse connections between the world and man, society and the individual. The reality surrounding a person is presented in the novel in different contexts: historical, political, social, cultural, national, etc. The author of the novel is interested in how the environment influences a person’s character, how he is formed, how his life develops, whether he managed to find his purpose and realize himself.

Many attribute the origin of the genre to antiquity, such as Long's Daphnis and Chloe, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and the knightly romance Tristan and Isolde.

In the works of classics of world literature, the novel is represented by numerous masterpieces:

Table 2. Examples of classic novels by foreign and Russian writers (XIX, XX centuries)

Famous Novels Russians writers of the XIX V .:

In the 20th century, Russian writers develop and enhance the traditions of their great predecessors and create no less wonderful novels:

Of course, none of such listings can claim completeness and exhaustive objectivity, especially when it comes to modern prose. In this case, the most famous works that glorified both the country’s literature and the name of the writer are named.

Epic novel. In ancient times, there were forms of heroic epic: folklore sagas, runes, epics, songs. These are the Indian “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”, the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf”, the French “Song of Roland”, the German “Song of the Nibelungs”, etc. In these works, the hero’s exploits were exalted in an idealized, often hyperbolic form. The later epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer, “Shah-name” by Ferdowsi, while retaining the mythological character of the early epic, nevertheless had a pronounced connection with real history, and the theme of the intertwining of human destiny and the life of the people becomes one of them main ones. The experience of the ancients will be in demand in the 19th-20th centuries, when writers will try to comprehend the dramatic relationship between the era and the individual personality, and talk about the tests to which morality, and sometimes the human psyche, is subjected at the time of the greatest historical upheavals. Let us remember the lines of F. Tyutchev: “Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments.” The poet's romantic formula in reality meant the destruction of all familiar forms of life, tragic losses and unfulfilled dreams.

The complex form of the epic novel allows writers to artistically explore these problems in all their completeness and inconsistency.

When we talk about the genre of the epic novel, of course, we immediately remember “War and Peace” by L. Tolstoy. Other examples can be mentioned: “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov, “Life and Fate” by V. Grossman, “The Forsyte Saga” by the English writer Galsworthy; the book of the American writer Margaret Mitchell “Gone with the Wind” can also with good reason be classified as this genre.

The very name of the genre indicates a synthesis, a combination of two main principles in it: novel and epic, i.e. related to the theme of the life of an individual and the theme of the history of the people. In other words, the epic novel tells about the destinies of the heroes (as a rule, the heroes themselves and their destinies are fictitious, invented by the author) against the backdrop of and in close connection with epoch-making historical events. Thus, in “War and Peace” - these are the fates of individual families (Rostov, Bolkonsky), beloved heroes (Prince Andrei, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha and Princess Marya) in the turning point historical period for Russia and all of Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, the Patriotic War of 1812 . In Sholokhov's book, the events of the First World War, two revolutions and a bloody civil war tragically invade the life of the Cossack farm, the Melekhov family, and the fate of the main characters: Grigory, Aksinya, Natalya. V. Grossman talks about the Great Patriotic War and its main event - Battle of Stalingrad, about the tragedy of the Holocaust. “Life and Fate” also intertwines historical and family theme: the author traces the history of the Shaposhnikovs, trying to understand why the destinies of the members of this family turned out so differently. Galsworthy describes the life of the Forsyte family throughout the legendary victorian era in England. Margaret Mitchell is a central event in US history, the Civil War between North and South, which dramatically changed the lives of many families and the fate of the most famous heroine of American literature - Scarlett O'Hara.

Dramatic genres of literature

Tragedy(tragodia Greek goat song) is a dramatic genre that originated in Ancient Greece. The emergence of ancient theater and tragedy is associated with the worship of the cult of the god of fertility and wine Dionysus. A number of holidays were dedicated to him, during which ritual magical games were played with mummers and satyrs, whom the ancient Greeks imagined as two-legged goat-like creatures. It is assumed that it was precisely this appearance of the satyrs singing hymns to the glory of Dionysus that gave such a strange name in translation to this serious genre. Theatrical performance in Ancient Greece was given magical religious significance, and theaters, built in the form of large open-air arenas, were always located in the very center of cities and were one of the main public places. Spectators sometimes spent the whole day here: eating, drinking, loudly expressing their approval or censure of the spectacle being presented. The heyday of ancient Greek tragedy is associated with the names of three great tragedians: Aeschylus (525-456 BC) - author of the tragedies “Chained Prometheus”, “Oresteia”, etc.; Sophocles (496-406 BC) - author of “Oedipus the King”, “Antigone”, etc.; and Euripides (480-406 BC) - the creator of “Medea”, “Troyanok”, etc. Their creations will remain examples of the genre for centuries; people will try to imitate them, but they will remain unsurpassed. Some of them (“Antigone”, “Medea”) are still staged today.

What are the main features of the tragedy? The main one is the presence of an insoluble global conflict: in ancient tragedy this is the confrontation between fate, fate, on the one hand, and man, his will, free choice, on the other. In the tragedies of later eras, this conflict acquired a moral and philosophical character, as a confrontation between good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, love and hatred. It has an absolute character; the heroes who embody the opposing forces are not ready for reconciliation or compromise, and therefore the ending of the tragedy often involves a lot of death. This is how the tragedies of the great English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) were constructed; let us remember the most famous of them: “Hamlet”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Othello”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Julius Caesar”, etc.

In the tragedies of the 17th century French playwrights Corneille (Horace, Polyeuctus) and Racine (Andromache, Britannicus), this conflict received a different interpretation - as a conflict of duty and feelings, rational and emotional in the souls of the main characters, i.e. . acquired a psychological interpretation.

The most famous in Russian literature is the romantic tragedy “Boris Godunov” by A.S. Pushkin, created on historical material. In one of his best works, the poet acutely raised the problem of the “real trouble” of the Moscow state - a chain reaction of impostures and “terrible atrocities” that people are ready for for the sake of power. Another problem is the attitude of the people to everything that happens in the country. The image of the “silent” people in the finale of “Boris Godunov” is symbolic; discussions continue to this day about what Pushkin wanted to say by this. Based on the tragedy, the opera of the same name by M. P. Mussorgsky was written, which became a masterpiece of Russian opera classics.

Comedy(Greek komos - cheerful crowd, oda - song) - a genre that originated in Ancient Greece a little later tragedy(V century BC). The most famous comedian of that time was Aristophanes (“Clouds”, “Frogs”, etc.).

In comedy with the help of satire and humor, i.e. comic, moral vices are ridiculed: hypocrisy, stupidity, greed, envy, cowardice, complacency. Comedies, as a rule, are topical, i.e. They also address social issues, exposing the shortcomings of the authorities. There are sitcoms and character comedies. In the first, a cunning intrigue, a chain of events (Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors) are important; in the second, the characters of the heroes, their absurdity, one-sidedness, as in the comedies “The Minor” by D. Fonvizin, “The Tradesman in the Nobility”, “Tartuffe”, written by the classic genre, French comedian of the 17th century Jean Baptiste Moliere. In Russian drama, satirical comedy with its sharp social criticism turned out to be especially in demand, such as “The Inspector General” by N. Gogol, “The Crimson Island” by M. Bulgakov. A. Ostrovsky created many wonderful comedies (“Wolves and Sheep”, “Forest”, “Mad Money”, etc.).

The comedy genre invariably enjoys success with the public, perhaps because it affirms the triumph of justice: in the finale, vice must certainly be punished, and virtue must triumph.

Drama- a relatively “young” genre that appeared in Germany in the 18th century as lesedrama (German) - a play for reading. The drama is addressed to the everyday life of a person and society, everyday life, and family relationships. I'm interested in drama first and foremost. inner world human, this is the most psychological of all dramatic genres. At the same time, this is also the most literary of stage genres, for example, the plays of A. Chekhov are largely perceived more as texts for reading, rather than as theatrical performances.

Lyrical genres of literature

The division into genres in lyrics is not absolute, because the differences between genres in this case are conditional and not as obvious as in epic and drama. More often we distinguish lyrical works by their thematic features: landscape, love, philosophical, friendly, intimate lyrics, etc. However, we can name some genres that have pronounced individual characteristics: elegy, sonnet, epigram, epistle, epitaph.

Elegy(elegos Greek: plaintive song) - a poem of medium length, usually of moral, philosophical, love, confessional content.

The genre arose in antiquity, and its main feature was considered to be the elegiac distich, i.e. dividing a poem into couplets, for example:

The longed-for moment has arrived: my long-term work is over. Why is this incomprehensible sadness secretly disturbing me?

A. Pushkin

In the poetry of the 19th-20th centuries, the division into couplets is no longer such a strict requirement; now the semantic features that are associated with the origin of the genre are more significant. In terms of content, the elegy goes back to the form of the Ancient funeral “laments”, in which, while mourning the deceased, they simultaneously remembered his extraordinary virtues. This origin predetermined the main feature of the elegy - the combination of grief with faith, regret with hope, acceptance of existence through sadness. The lyrical hero of the elegy is aware of the imperfection of the world and people, his own sinfulness and weakness, but does not reject life, but accepts it in all its tragic beauty. A striking example is “Elegy” by A.S. Pushkin:

Crazy years of faded fun

It's hard for me, like a vague hangover.

But like wine - sadness days gone by

In my soul, the older I get, the stronger it is.

My path is sad. Promises me work and grief

The coming troubled sea.

But I don’t want, O friends, to die;

I want to live so that I can think and suffer;

And I know I will have pleasure

Between sorrows, worries and worries:

Sometimes I’ll get drunk again with harmony,

I will shed tears over the fiction,

And maybe - at my sad sunset

Love will flash with a farewell smile.

Sonnet(sonetto Italian song) - the so-called “solid” poetic form, which has strict rules of construction. The sonnet has 14 lines, divided into two quatrains and two tercets. In quatrains only two rhymes are repeated, in terzettos two or three. The methods of rhyming also had their own requirements, which, however, varied.

The birthplace of the sonnet is Italy; this genre is also represented in English and French poetry. The 14th century Italian poet Petrarch is considered the luminary of the genre. He dedicated all his sonnets to his beloved Donna Laura.

In Russian literature, the sonnets of A.S. Pushkin remain unsurpassed; poets of the Silver Age also created beautiful sonnets.

Epigram(epigramma Greek, inscription) - a short mocking poem, usually addressed to a specific person. Many poets write epigrams, sometimes increasing the number of their ill-wishers and even enemies. The epigram on Count Vorontsov turned out to be bad for A.S. Pushkin by the hatred of this nobleman and, ultimately, expulsion from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye:

Popu, my lord, half-merchant,

Half-sage, half-ignorant,

Semi-scoundrel, but there is hope

Which will be complete at last.

Mocking poems can be dedicated not only to a specific person, but also to a general addressee, as, for example, in the epigram of A. Akhmatova:

Could Biche, like Dante, create?

Did Laura go to praise the heat of love?

I taught women to speak...

But, God, how to silence them!

There are even known cases of a kind of duel of epigrams. When the famous Russian lawyer A.F. Kony was appointed to the Senate, his ill-wishers spread an evil epigram about him:

Caligula brought his horse to the Senate,

It stands, dressed in both velvet and gold.

But I will say, we have the same arbitrariness:

I read in the newspapers that Kony is in the Senate.

To which A.F. Kony, who was distinguished by his extraordinary literary talent, replied:

(epitafia Greek, funerary) - a farewell poem to a deceased person, intended for a tombstone. Initially this word was used in a literal sense, but later acquired a more figurative meaning. For example, I. Bunin has a lyrical miniature in prose “Epitaph”, dedicated to farewell to the Russian estate that was dear to the writer, but forever a thing of the past. Gradually, the epitaph is transformed into a dedication poem, a farewell poem (“Wreath to the Dead” by A. Akhmatova). Perhaps the most famous poem of this kind in Russian poetry is “The Death of a Poet” by M. Lermontov. Another example is “Epitaph” by M. Lermontov, dedicated to memory Dmitry Venevitinov, poet and philosopher, died at the age of twenty-two.

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Introduction

1. The emergence of the fantasy genre in Russia and abroad: general principles poetics

1.1 From science fiction to fantasy

1.2 Features of the fantastic in fantasy (general principles of poetics)

2. Critics about the fantasy genre: philosophical and literary interpretation

2.1 Marking the boundary “rational - irrational”: the problem of identifying one’s world

2.2 Main characters of fantasy

2.3 The influence of fantasy theory on the development of the literary process

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

In modern literary criticism, there is currently no generally accepted definition of the fantasy genre. Almost everyone who writes about fantasy tries to give their own definition of this concept. As a result, a significant number of definitions appeared, sometimes contradicting one another.

Definitions of genre can be grouped around several trends. Most often, fantasy is defined as a special direction of science fiction. “In the modern literary lexicon, the definition of fantasy (from “fantasy”) is increasingly encountered, which is an entire literature where the boundaries of the real, fantastic and surreal, mystical are blurred.”

The word "fantasy" is firmly entrenched in the mind modern man. It is often used as a designation for the mass literature and film industry of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In Russian literary criticism, this phenomenon of modern culture is at the stage of comprehension. fantasy genre poetics

The fantasy genre is currently causing a lot of controversy regarding the history of the genre, its genre-species and functional nature, genre modifications(classification), poetics, etc. This situation is explained by the comparative youth of the genre: fantasy literature has existed for just over 100 years, the term appeared in the 70s of the twentieth century. abroad, in the 80s - in Russia.

The subject of research in the course work is the fantasy genre. The object of the study is the works of Russian, Western European and American writers and critics working in the fantasy genre.

The purpose of the study is to identify the genre uniqueness of fantasy literature, to consider its theory as it develops in modern literary criticism. To achieve this goal, the study needs to solve a number of problems:

Job objectives:

1. Consider the main trends in the development of the genre and its connections with other genres.

2. Consider the ways of formation of the fantasy genre.

3. Analyze the images of the main characters of the fantasy genre.

4. Consider the influence of the fantasy genre on the modern literary process.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the course work is the fundamental works of the largest representatives of domestic and foreign literary studies, among which we can highlight works on the theory of myth and folklore by V.Ya. Proppa, E.M. Meletinsky, Ya.E. Golosovkera, A.K. Bayburina, V.V. Ivanova, V.N. Toporova, Yu.M. Lotman, G.V. Maltseva, E.M. Neelova, L.G. Nevskoy, S.Yu. Neklyudova, E.S. Novik, Ts. Todorova, T. Chernyshova and others.

Research methods - descriptive-analytical with elements of system analysis, elements of cultural-historical and comparative-historical methods.

The work consists of an introduction, main part, conclusion and a list of sources used. The introduction formulates the goals and objectives of the study, substantiates the relevance of the scientific problem posed and the practical significance of the study.

1. The emergence of the fantasy genre in Russia and abroad: general principles of poetics

1.1 From science fiction to fantasy

"Fantasy is a type of fantastic literature, or literature about the extraordinary, based on a plot assumption of an irrational nature. This assumption has no logical motivation in the text, suggesting the existence of facts and phenomena that, unlike science fiction, cannot be rationally explained ".

“In the most general case, fantasy is a work where the fantastic element is incompatible with the scientific picture of the world.”

"Fantasy is a description of worlds like ours, worlds with magic working in them, worlds with a clear boundary between Darkness and Light. These worlds can be some kind of variation of the Earth in the distant past, the distant future, an alternative present, as well as parallel worlds that exist out of touch with the Earth."

A number of researchers are inclined to define fantasy as a type of literary fairy tale. "According to external parameters, fantasy is a type of fantastic fairy tale." Fantasy writer E. Gevorkyan calls fantasy “a fairy-tale phantasmagoria of imaginary worlds.”

“Fairy tale. This genre differs from science fiction in the absence of moral teaching and attempts at messianism. From the traditional fairy tale - in the absence of division into good and bad,” says Nik Perumov’s article.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in his essay “On Fairy Tales,” discusses the role of fantasy in the creation of wonderful secondary worlds. Tolkien extols fantasy, like the romantics of the early 19th century. But, unlike them, the writer considers fantasy not an irrational, but a rational activity. In his opinion, the author of a work of fiction must consciously strive to establish an orientation towards reality. It is necessary to give the fictional internal “logic of the real,” starting with the fact that the author himself must believe in the existence of Fairy (in tune with fantasy), “a secondary world based on the mythological imagination.” Another trend is defining fantasy through myth. This is quite natural, since fantasy literature always has a mythological basis.

“This genre arose on the basis of the authors’ rethinking of the traditional mythological and folklore heritage. And in the best examples of this genre one can find a number of parallels between the author’s fiction and the mythological and ritual ideas that formed its basis.”

“The world of fantasy is ancient myths, legends, tales passed through modern consciousness and revived by the will of the author.” The most clear definition of fantasy is offered by the reference book “Russian Fantasy of the 20th Century in Names and Persons”: “Fantasy is a kind of fusion of fairy tales, science fiction and adventure novels into a single (“parallel”, “secondary”) artistic reality with a tendency to recreate, rethink the mythical archetype and form a new world within its borders.

Fiction presupposes the content of an element of the extraordinary, i.e. a narrative about what does not happen, did not exist and cannot exist. The main meaning of the terms fantasy and fantastic is a special way of displaying reality in forms that are unusual for it. Features of fiction: 1) the premise of the extraordinary, i.e. a plot-shaping assumption about the reality of extraordinary events; 2) motivation for the extraordinary; 3) a form of expression of the extraordinary.

Fantasy is secondary to imagination, it is a product of imagination, it changes the appearance of reality, reflected in consciousness. In this case, we are also talking about a subjective beginning, a kind of substitution. The modern understanding of fantasy is also based on the teachings of K.G. Jung, and then fantasy is the self-image of the unconscious; fantasy is most active when the intensity of the conscious decreases, as a result the barrier of the unconscious is broken.

Fantasy is a concept used to designate a category of works of art that depict phenomena that are distinctly different from the phenomena of reality. For imagery fantastic literature characterized by a high degree of conventionality, which can manifest itself in violation of logic, accepted patterns, natural proportions and forms of the depicted. The basis of any work of fiction is the opposition “real - fantastic”. The main feature of the poetics of the fantastic is the so-called “doubling” of reality, achieved either through the creation of another reality, completely different from the actual reality, or through the formation of “two worlds”, which consists in the parallel coexistence of the real and unreal worlds. There are such types of fiction as explicit and implicit.

The origins of the fantastic lie in the mythopoetic consciousness of humanity. The era of the heyday of the fantastic is traditionally considered to be romanticism and neo-romanticism. Fantasy gives rise to a special character in works of art that are directly opposed to realism. Fiction does not recreate reality in its laws and foundations, but freely violates them; it forms its unity and integrity not by analogy with how it happens in the real world. By its nature, the pattern of the fantastic world is completely different from the pattern of reality. Science fiction creatively reproduces not reality, but dreams and daydreams in all the uniqueness of their qualities. This is the essential basis of fantasy or its pure form.

There are three types of fantasy works. Works of fiction of the first type - completely detached from reality - are pure dreams, in which no direct consideration of the real reasons or reasons for them is given. Fantastic works of the second type, in which a secret basis for everyday phenomena is given, are dreams when we directly perceive real reasons for wonderful images and events or, in general, their connection with reality, i.e. when in the dream itself we contemplate not only fantastic pictures, but also the real causative agents of them or, in general, elements of the real world directly related to them - and the real turns out to be subordinate to the fantastic. Finally, fantastic works of the third type, in which we directly contemplate not the real causative agents or companions of mysterious phenomena, but precisely their real consequences. These are those sleepy states when, in the first moments of awakening, while still in the power of sleepy visions, we see them introduced one way or another into the real world - descended into waking life. All three types of fiction are equally common in works of art, but they are not equivalent.

The fantasy genre is a type of fantastic literature. In terms of volume of publications and popularity among the average reader, fantasy has left all other areas of science fiction far behind. Among all literary movements, it is fantasy that is developing most rapidly, exploring new territories and attracting more and more readers.

Fantasy as a technique has been known to art since time immemorial. Actually, to one degree or another it is inherent in any type of art. In literature, it has come a very long way: from primitive myth to fairy tales, from fairy tales and legends to the literature of the Middle Ages, and then romanticism. Finally, in modern literature It's the turn of science fiction and fantasy. These genres developed in parallel, sometimes touching in some way.

The issue of the relationship between science fiction and fantasy has not yet been resolved. On the one hand, both are united in the same concept of “science fiction” and are perceived as its modifications. On the other hand, fantasy is clearly opposed to the literature that is conventionally designated by the term “science fiction.”

1.2 Features of the fantastic in fantasy (general principles of poetics)

The concepts of imagination, fantasy and the fantastic are discussed in detail in modern science, mainly in psychology. In fantasy literature, these concepts are associated with the article by J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Magic Stories", in which they have an interpretation that differs in many ways from the generally accepted one. The heyday of fantasy (neo-myth) occurs in the postmodern era, the era of experimentation and the search for new forms."

In descriptive concepts of fantasy, in total, a number of features of the genre are defined, among which the following come to the fore: a fantastic picture of the world, a fairy-tale-mythological basis and genre synthesis. Researchers find in fantasy elements of the heroic epic, legend, chivalric romance, literary fairy tale, romantic story, Gothic novel, occult-mystical literature of the Symbolists, postmodern novel, etc. (probably different for each specific work). It can be noticed that everything listed genres and directions are somehow connected with myth.

So, “fantasy is always based on either a revised canonical system of myths, or an original author’s mythopoetic concept, the most important feature of which is the creation of a secondary world (a holistic picture of the world and man), where man is a microcosm in the macrocosm system.”

In Russian fiction there are a number of excellent fantastic works by N.V. Gogol, V.F. Odoevsky, I.S. Turgeneva, V.M. Garshina, F.K. Sologuba and many others. etc. In the works of F.M. Dostoevsky's fiction plays a very important role.

One of the features of the fantasy genre is that it is based on ancient mythological ideas, in particular, German-Scandinavian tales that retain traces of pre-Christian pagan ideas. The attachment to the mythical, heroic and magical, characteristic of English culture for a long time, increases at the end of the 19th century and reaches its apogee in the 20th century. Christian ideas began to be revealed in magical stories; the images of the main characters reflect both the heroic traits of the characters in the epic and the virtues inherent only in the Christian ideal. And the imaginary worlds themselves are justified in cosmogony and have their own history, which is in many ways similar to the real situation.

The holistic genre language of foreign fantasy was so recognizable that the Polish science fiction writer A. Sapkowski at the end of the 1980s wrote a model of the plot of a typical fantasy novel, based on the plot of Cinderella. Based on the changes made to the known plot, we have assumed that the relevant components of a recognizable genre language are the following:

1. The type of hero changes. The semantic core on which the magical plot has been based for centuries is the change in the status of the main character. Cinderella in A. Sapkowski’s model is a heroine with the right to the throne, “a hero doomed to heroism.”

2. The role of the antagonist’s image is strengthening (this is no longer the image of the stepmother, but the image of the pest prince “who is assigned a separate space). This entailed a number of consistent changes in the new plot: fairy tale plot about Cinderella is replaced by the stylization of another type of plot, the content of which is the search (quest) and the fight against the antagonist-pest; the need for search and fight has actualized the importance of the typology of spaces in fantasy. The image of the secondary world in modern fantasy criticism stands out as fundamental).

2. The “other” world, which has become very important, is divided axiologically (the prince is a demonic creature, and his mentor is an evil sorcerer) and its negative part is opposed to the positive world (Cinderella and the fairy godmother). A struggle between the higher forces of the secondary world arises, which “shapes the appearance of being”).

3. The importance of the type of hero-protagonist increases, which is enhanced by the introduction of a prediction function (prophecy).

The playful nature of fantasy manifests itself not only at the level of image creation, i.e. games with a standard image, but also at the level of plot formation. Considering the problem of plot formation in Russian fantasy, we have identified two basic principles for organizing literary text in works of Russian and foreign fantasy:

1) the artistic material for combining and reconstructing the secondary world can be an idea of ​​historical reality. 2) any foreign text can serve as artistic material for combining and reconstructing the secondary world. The first principle organizes the text in such a way that a recognizable reality is played out, and the combination of elements is built into a new plot, which, nevertheless, is familiar to readers. The second principle is the playful use of someone else’s text, which, in turn, can be: 1) a well-known mythological plot (or a separate mythology); 2) someone else's original story.

The mythological image-plot basis as a secondary world is the most easily perceived fantasy picture: almost everything is already known. The writer is faced with two sets of tasks: 1) a set of logical explanations for those irrational events and plot twists that constitute the dominant feature of fiction; 2) a body of original ideas introduced by the author into the mythological picture fantasy world.

Mysticism has always been present in Russian literature, especially in the 19th century, when Russian fiction was strongly influenced by German romanticism. This Hoffmannian tradition of Russian literature continued at the beginning of the twentieth century - just remember the prose of the Serapion Brothers, A. Green, V. Bryusov, V. Kaverin and M. Bulgakov.

If we consider only the narrow subgenre of fantasy - “swords and magic”, then we must admit that in the Russian literary tradition there is more “magic” than “swords”. But, on the other hand, if “Taras Bulba” N.V. Gogol add mysticism from his own “The Enchanted Place”, “Viy” and “Terrible Vengeance”, we get a work of heroic fantasy. This synthesis did not happen due to the weakness of the adventure genre in Russian literature as a whole. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, this genre already began to take shape and grow stronger. A. Green and V. Bryusov came closest to creating heroic fantasy. In Green's stories, in Bryusov's story "Mountain of Stars", in the poetry of N. Gumilyov, a typical hero of "swords and magic" is already encountered - a wandering loner, a strong and self-confident person who knows how not only to reflect. But also to act, able to stand up for oneself and look into the eyes of death.

In later times, elements of heroic fantasy can be found in “Aelita” by A. Tolstoy, “The Last Man from Atlantis” by A. Belyaev and in such works by I. Efremov as “On the Edge of the Oikumene”, “The Journey of Baurjet”, “Thais of Athens” . Full-fledged works, which can without hesitation be attributed to the genre of “swords and magic,” began to appear in Russia only in last decade XX century.

In the 1980s, the first fantasy publishing houses began to appear. However, it was almost impossible for Soviet fantasy writers to publish their books. The only publishing houses that tried to somehow help them were “Text” in Moscow and “Terra Fantastika” in St. Petersburg. Publishing houses were afraid that readers would not be attracted to Soviet authors, so they were asked to create a “foreign pseudonym” for themselves and publish under it. So, for example, Svyatoslav Loginov was offered to write some work under the pseudonym “Harry Harrison”. At the same time, Dmitry Gromov and Oleg Ladyzhensky began to sign their works with the pseudonym “Henry Lion Oldie”. By 1993, the only Russian fantasy author published under his own name was Nik Perumov, due to his independent sequel to The Lord of the Rings. In the same year, it became obvious that the circulation of books was much greater than the number of potential readers. Then the circulation of books fell twenty to thirty times. Large publishing houses have found a solution to this by increasing the number of book titles they publish.

In St. Petersburg, the publication "Azbuka", among other books, published "Slavic fantasy" - the novel "Wolfhound" by Maria Semyonova, thereby consolidating the presence of Russian authors in the book market. The preference for foreign science fiction writers over Russian authors finally ceased in 1997. The leading Moscow publications Eksmo and AST have launched several series of Russian science fiction and fantasy. It was then that the rapid growth and flourishing of fantasy and science fiction written in the former countries of the USSR began.

Russian fantasy is strongly influenced by its English-speaking "ancestor". But it was American stereotypes that incredibly narrowed the range of problems, images and plots developed by fantasy. Medieval surroundings, a traditional quest, a standard set of heroes, all this came to us along with Tolkien and Zelazny. The traditions of Gogol and Bulgakov are forgotten; many do not even consider these works to be fantasy. Few worthy works of Russian fantasy so far decisively destroy stereotypes. In Russian literature there are examples of Chinese, Indian, ancient Greek fantasy, fantasy of the Stone Age; modern fantasy, alternative fantasy, and even science fiction future fantasy exist and have been used by followers. We consider the most striking examples of Russian fantasy role-playing, such as "The Black Book of Arda" by N.E. Vasilyeva, N.V. Nekrasova, “The Last Ring Bearer” by K. Eskov, “Spear of Darkness” by N. Perumov. The analysis of their updated artistic system is based on the result of an analysis of the dynamics of the positive Tolkien image in subcultural-role folklore.

In Russia, his most significant representative of the epic fantasy genre is Nik Perumov. From the very beginning and until now they are considered the “king” of Russian epic fantasy. The Ring of Darkness trilogy, which marked the beginning of the writer’s popularity, is, by and large, an imitation of Tolkien. However, this imitation is very detailed, carefully worked out and poses an ideological challenge to the author of the original text - Tolkien. Perumov consolidated his success with the cycle “The Chronicles of Hjervard”. The writer has written both TV series and individual novels. Among them, in addition to epic, there are also heroics and techno-fantasy.

The world of fantasy initially arose as a parallel to the everyday life of humanity. This is how Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Clive Lewis’s Narnia, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea and other worlds appeared. The inhabitants of these worlds or the person who finds themselves in them find themselves in extremely difficult situations that require not only courageous actions and heroic deeds, but, above all, tough moral choices. In these books, everything was possible - wizards, dragons, magic rings, werewolves and witches, corridors in time and space, i.e. the entire arsenal of fairy tales and ancient legends. However, with all the flights of imagination in this transformed myth, one thing remained unchanged - a person must remain himself. Moreover, the moral situation always required the hero to use his best spiritual qualities. She was a kind of exam for the title of a person. As in traditional fairy tales, good prevailed, but it prevailed precisely as good, without the slightest concessions or compromises. Even the most noble goal here did not justify immoral means. The main task of “fantasy” was to establish harmony within a person, to conquer oneself. Judging by the popularity of the fantasy genre among readers of different levels of training, then the set goal was largely achieved.

Modern genre fantasy has its origins in the European chivalric romance, Scandinavian sagas, myths and legends such as the Arthurian cycle, the so-called Gothic novel, and the works of mystics and romantics of the 19th century. In Europe, among the progenitors of fantasy one can name the names of Hoffmann and Walpoll, i.e. representatives of German romanticism and the English Gothic novel. There is probably not a single writer in Great Britain who has not written at least one ghost story. Even such a realist and writer of everyday life as Charles Dickens wrote the story “A Christmas Carol”, where one bad character is guided on the true path by a ghost. S. Maugham wrote an entire novel called “The Magician,” and its content fully corresponds to the title.

America also could not escape this trend. In the 19th century, first of all, two names should be mentioned - Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce. In American science fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a clear division into three streams. Science fiction of the Jules Verne style, which described the technical wonders of the future. The leader of this direction was Hugo Gernsbeck. Then there was a stream that continued the traditions of the adventure, colonial novel. The leader of this trend was Edgar Burroughs. There was also a group of authors who published in the magazine "WEIRD TALES" - "Fatal Stories". What was published in this magazine, according to the modern classification, belongs to fantasy.

In general, plot formation in fantasy occurs as a result of a multi-step game: both with the interpretation and aftereffect (role-playing game) of someone else's author's text, and with the interpretation of a well-known mythological plot, placed within the framework of a game overcoming a ban.

Category of plausibility in fantasy

Following psychological verisimilitude in fantasy is the same immutable law as in literature in general: “The more difficult it is to create the illusion of truth, the more you have to worry about authenticity.” In its methods of creating authenticity, the fantasy genre follows the general literary tradition begun by the romantics - attention to plausible details in the description of implausible creatures and phenomena. The tradition of fantastic folklore prose is also used - a reference to a witness. Some extra-textual and extra-plot reality acts as a “witness”. In the first case, this is the plausible association of fictional events with historical events or events accepted as reality. An example is the novel by A. Lazarchuk and M. Uspensky “Look into the Eyes of Monsters,” where the events of the novel take place in the context of the history of the world (and Russia) of the twentieth century. The creation of an extra-plot reality consists of a detailed description of a fantasy world with pseudo-documentary fragments of secondary historical chronicles, excerpts of secondary literary works, secondary linguistic, ethnographic, geographical and cartographic and other reference materials.

The requirement of psychological verisimilitude in fantasy actualizes the literal understanding of the fantastic image, completely rejecting allegorical, allegorical ambiguity. It is precisely this requirement literary game in poetics, fantasy is kept from completely transforming into philosophical allegory. So, in the existence of Russian fantasy of the 90s and its poetics, the prerequisites are ripening for the use of such an artistic technique as the creation of fantastic conditions (world) as a result of a holistic game (role-playing) action. Also, to create a pure verisimilitude of an implausible world, the general literary technique of “text within a text” is used. Russian fantasy, which emerged in the wake of 1994-1996, not only adopted the invariant genre language given by the foreign version, but also supplemented it.

The ancestors of fantasy were classic fairy-tale quest stories: from the tales of “The Thousand and One Nights” to Russian fairy tales-travels like “Go there, I don’t know where” or “Tales of rejuvenating apples and living water." In turn, stories of this type structurally go back to the actions of the heroes of antiquity. The basis of a fantasy novel is always the story of a magical journey. The hero travels beyond the horizon of familiar reality. Along the way, the hero has a chance to undergo initiation and gain new knowledge. And if the hero manages to return to his reality and bring knowledge to his world, then this world changes, sometimes catastrophically. At the same time, reality is recreated by the hero anew. Actually, “recreating reality again” is the main work performed by a fantasy novel.

Fantasy is in a genetic relationship with both folk tales and myth. From myth, fantasy inherited the epic nature of the narrative and the original tragedy. These trends are especially clearly visible in the novels by Nika Perumov “Death of the Gods”, G.L. Oldie "The Many-Armed God of Dalaina". The hero is obliged to do what is intended, even if it threatens him with death. The problem of struggle in a hopeless situation colors the entire heroic epic of the peoples of Europe in tragic colors. Modern fantasy adds to this situation the idea of ​​moral choice. The fantasy hero is not as determined as the character in mythological tales, and therefore the fantasy genre opens up space for creating contradictory, living human images. The tale brings a lyricism to fantasy that science fiction often lacks.

Ideally, a work written in the fantasy genre should combine both trends - the epicness of myth and the lyricism of a fairy tale. The fairy tale is the oldest and immortal genre of literature. Fairy tales gave the world of fantasy veiled edification. However, fantasy has taken a step forward, abandoning the division of heroes into good and bad.

Fantasy can be characterized as modern fairy-tale literature written in the New Age for a modern reader. These are novels and stories about wizards and heroes, gnomes, goblins, dragons, elves, demons, magic rings and buried treasures, drowned continents and forgotten civilizations using real or fictional mythology. Andrzej Sapkowski in the article “Pirug, or “No Gold in the Gray Mountains”” writes: “Fairy tale and fantasy are identical, because they are implausible.” Let’s consider what the main difference between these genres is.

Chernysheva, calling fantasy “game fiction,” connects its birth with the tradition of fairy tales and carnival restructuring of the world: “The new tradition of literary fairy tales is combined with the tradition of carnival game reconstruction of the world, going back to ancient times. Together they form what we call gaming fiction.”

Romantics also took part in the formation of the genre. Of course, back then it wasn’t fantasy as we know it. For example, Hoffmann already has all the features of fantasy, except for the world of fantasy itself in the modern sense. There is a fairy-tale world, there are magical creatures, something unreal, unknowable and obviously impossible in everyday life. But in romantic literature it is still the fabulousness that is emphasized. Hoffmann's magical world remains a fairy tale, it is not equal to the real world, it is not presented as a self-sufficient, completely possible world, while the fantasy world should be equivalent to the real one, there is absolutely no subordination between them.

T. Stepnovska, discussing the origin of fantasy, states: “The main source of the emergence of fantasy as a special type of fiction, where the free play of imagination is capable of breaking any law of the real world, introducing any miracle and magic as a component of content and form, are myth and fairy tale.” . The basic law of myth is fate, the highest power. In a fairy tale, the principle is different. In it, good is by definition stronger than evil, and the main character always defeats evil simply because it has to be so. His victory is inevitable. Evil in a fairy tale exists only so that good can defeat it. “Fantasy models a world that loses its fairy-tale conditionality at the existential level.” A fairy tale creates its own, completely closed world, in which the laws of nature can be ignored. Fantasy introduces into the empirical world laws that contradict knowledge. Magic and non-magic in fantasy resist each other. This is well stated in E. Ratkevich’s novel “The Sword Without a Handle”: “the world resists magical intervention. Even a mountain range, even coastal sand, even dust on an old cobweb - they do not submit without resistance.”

A literary fairy tale is closer to fantasy precisely in that everyday life already penetrates into it, but it is not yet fantasy, since it retains the conventions of fairy tales. The world of a fairy tale always remains the world of a fairy tale, and its laws do not apply externally.

Thus, by comparing realistic prose, science fiction and fantasy, we can conclude that

1) realistic prose describes events that did not happen, but which could well have happened;

2) science fiction describes events that are impossible from the point of view of today, but assumes that under certain assumptions such events are possible as consequences of some scientific discoveries or technological developments;

3) fantasy does not appeal to rationalism, but, on the contrary, puts the mystical, occult, irrational at the forefront, which remains fundamentally inexplicable.

Consequently, in the text there is a flying carpet, it comes from nowhere, and after use it disappears to somewhere unknown, and all this does not cause the slightest surprise in the heroes, then this is a fairy tale. If the characters view the magic carpet as something unusual, but still use it to achieve their goals in a very realistic way, then it is fantasy. If you install a large-caliber machine gun on a flying carpet and a squadron of such carpets flies to storm Satan’s castle, then this is “science fantasy”. And if a carpet flies because it has anti-gravity chips woven into its fabric, then this is science fiction.

Conclusions from the first chapter:

1. Fantasy is a literary genre that was formed in the twentieth century as a dream of a person’s personal freedom from economics, laws and other aspects of everyday life, incorporating the edification and humanity of a fairy tale, the epic and tragic nature of a myth, and the nobility of a knightly romance. Authors working in this genre create worlds located parallel to reality or not connected with it at all.

2. Of the literary genres, science fiction and mysticism are closest to fantasy. It is difficult to separate science fiction from fantasy. Science fiction pays great attention to progress and everything that it describes seems possible to humanity in the future.

3. Fantasy initially states that it describes an unreal world, and that this is impossible in our real world. In fantasy, manifestations of the supernatural and what we are accustomed to calling the real world exist on equal terms.

2. Critics about the fantasy genre: philosophical and literary interpretation

2.1 Marking the boundary “rational - irrational”: the problem of identifying one’s world

Despite different points of view regarding the origin of fantasy, the undeniable fact is that it was the British professor of linguistics J.R.R. Tolkien at one time created a sample or canon of a fantasy novel, which became a classic and the starting point for the development of the literary genre of fantasy. The Celtic-British complex of legends and myths that forms the basis of J. Tolkien's trilogy has thus become a traditional basis for the creation of subsequent fantasy novels.

The worldwide success of The Lord of the Rings pushed publishers to pay serious attention to fairy-tale and magical fiction.

The genre is developing like an avalanche, more and more milestones are appearing in it, and the Hall of Fame is quickly filling with portraits. In 1961, the Elric and Hawkmoon sagas by Michael Moorcock appeared. In 1963, the first “World of Witches” by Endre Norton (in Russian translation - “Witch World”) was born. "Fafrd and the Gray Cat" by Fritz Leiber appears in the pocket edition. And finally, with enormous fanfare - “Wizard of Earthsea” by Ursula Le Guin and at the same time, “The Last Unicorn” by P. Biggle, two books of an absolutely cult nature. In the 1970s, Stephen King's books appeared and broke all sales records. True, these are more likely horror stories than fantasy. Coming soon are "Doubting Thomas" by Stephen Donaldson, "Amber" by Zelazny, "Xanth" by Piers Anthony, "Derini" by Katherine Kurtz, "Born of the Grave" by Tanith Lee, "The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley, "Belgariad" by David Eddings and many others.

Faith in science and technological progress, fearlessness in the face of any futurological forecasts, conviction in the boundless prospects for human development - all these conceptual pillars of science fiction determine the popularity of this deeply rational (and rationalistic) genre of literature in eras of increased social optimism. Such a time of technocratic euphoria and social progressivism, for example, was the 50-60s of the last century, when science fiction “turned into the sphere of almost everyday thinking of the average American,” and a brilliant galaxy of science fiction writers came to literature: A. Azimov, R.E. Heinlein, K.D. Simak, R.D. Bradbury; created in Great Britain best works Arthur Clarke, in Poland - Stanislaw Lem; in the USSR - Ivan Efremov, and later the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychev.

Thus, in 1969, Katharina R. Simpson wrote: "Tolkien is unoriginal, boring and sentimental. His glorification of the past is a comic for adults, he systematizes the despair of the modernists. The Waste Land with comments, without tears."

In the 70s, fantasy experienced its highest rise, it was a period of experimentation and, as one little-known character said, “the age of great innovation.” It is logical that it was then that the need for a thematic award became evident. This became the “World Fantasy Award” or WFA (World Fantasy Award) in 1975; it is awarded at the “World Fantasy Convention”, which is held mainly in the USA, but has been held several times in Canada and the UK. The WFA is by far the most prestigious award in the field of fantasy.

The essentially irrationalistic genre of fantasy, on the contrary, flourishes in eras of social breakdown, reduced passionarity as - in the apt words of Tsvetan Todorov - “the restless conscience of the positivist age”, pushing the imagination into the compensatory spaces of neo-mythology. Special role science fiction in the culture of the twentieth century, departing from the canon of modern European classics and establishing its own mode of interaction between the rational and the irrational, the individual and the mass, turns it into a generally accepted “way of destroying taboo topics,” because “if in the age of positivism a breakthrough into the reality of the unconscious could happen, then only in the form of fiction." It is not without reason that the system of genre forms of fantasy, since the time of Gernsback, along with classical fantasy (narratives about heroes and wizards, as a rule, of some kind of conventional Middle Ages), sometimes includes the genres “mystery” and “horror”, which open the door wide to the subconscious.

Fantasy is the future as the past; a world with a rigid hierarchy, inequality, cultural and moral decline, and the archaization of consciousness. Science fiction in its classic form demonstrated “the bright future of victorious communism in the Strugatskys / the triumph of democracy and individual freedom in Star Trek.” Even in this classic work Heinlein as "Starship Troopers", humanity built its own utopia, which was already attacked by Bugs.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the popularity of fantasy gave rise to role playing games. In them, a party of one/multiple players travels through a fantasy world in search of various adventures. Moreover, each player has various characteristics that change with increasing experience. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most successful gaming systems.

HELL. Gusarova highlights the formulaic principle of a fantasy hero, which is “tied” to an irrational gift and its obligatory implementation in a conventionally fantastic world. “In addition,” she writes, “in connection with the existence of the irrational Gift and its necessary implementation in the “crucible of trials,” the principle of the world is defined as magical and divided dichotomously. In this regard, the magical world is the focus of an eternal battle. The hero, drawn by his gift , returns to this world...”

The world of fantasy, in contrast to the positivist rationality of science fiction, is recognized by the reader as a space that obeys other, illogical, magical laws; in fantasy terminology this is designated by the word “magic” or “witchcraft.” Fantasy uses traditional artistic images of witchcraft when creating its secondary world. This power, initially present in the hero, manifesting itself as a specific talent, is bestowed upon him by some irrational being who is immanently present in the fantasy world. This strength can also be determined by the nature of the hero.

2.2 Main characters of fantasy

Gusarova proposes to consider the principle of the hero and the principle of the world as the substantive principles of fantasy. One cannot but agree with this, but with a small clarification. Determining the content of the secondary world must be put in first place, since the creation of any work of fiction, according to modern science fiction researchers, begins with the “creation” of the world: “... first of all, it is necessary to create a certain world, arranging it as best as possible and thinking through it in detail” .

The main process that occurs with the main character is his heroic identification. The hero has five comparative analytical qualities: “Obtaining a magical quality or means”, “Hero identification - the second stage”, “Magical assistant, zoomorphic transfiguration, types of transfiguration”, “Hero identification - the last stage”, “Motive of the miraculous birth of a fantasy hero ".

Analyzing the process of identifying the main character as a hero, we distinguish two stages of this identification. The first stage is the identification of the hero of Russian fantasy of the late twentieth century. associated with the initial manifestation in him of special forces of a witchcraft nature. The presence of an initial witchcraft nature in the hero determines his first stage of initiation as change social status from low, “invisible” to high – in demand, “visible”. A symbol of social change can be the acquisition of a symbolic weapon with which the hero is connected in a magical, supernatural way. The acquisition of high status is confirmed both by a social change (title, high position) and by the attitude of others. The change in status also indicates that the “alien” world for the hero becomes his own.

The second stage of the process of identifying a character as a protagonist occurs on several levels. The first level is when, following a traditional change in social status, the hero becomes visible to the personified irrational force of the “alien” world. The identification of the hero by the irrational forces of the “alien” world can occur through a system of imposing and violating prohibitions (the legacy of folk fairy tales), which in the context of fantasy represent the game rules of the plot (violation of the prohibition is the goal, and the method of violation is an unreal plan, a fantastic conjecture). The second level of the second stage of identification is strongly associated with the communication of the prophecy to the hero, where he is identified as the expected messiah. The main function of prophecy in fantasy poetics, as in a fairy tale, is to convey to the hero a message about the main sabotage and ways to eliminate it. The importance of the hero's mission and the prophecy about him is directly related to the degree of danger of the antagonist.

The presence of a special gift in the nature of the hero also depends on the degree of danger coming from the antagonist. The image of an antagonist in fantasy contains sacred signs that are expressed obviously or detected during analysis. The antagonist in the figurative system of Russian fantasy of the late 1990s often has pronounced signs of a sacred cosmic essence; its most important and fundamental function is to disrupt the balance and order of the secondary fantasy world. This has its consequence in the image of the hero, who, in the process of his heroic identification, must manifest himself as a person who also has signs of sacredness.

In Russian fantasy, the last stage of hero identification partially occurs in the figurative system of two fairy-tale functions of “transfiguration” (sign T) - “the hero is given a new look” and one of the constituent components of the function “a magical means is at the hero’s disposal” (designation Zoomorphic transfiguration Z). The hero of Russian fantasy can experience two types of transfiguration: of the zoomorphic type - turning into a messiah monster, or acquiring the characteristics of an anthropomorphic divine being - anthropomorphic transfiguration.

A typological dependence of the form of the hero's transfiguration on the appearance of the enemy is built: the more monstrous the enemy, the more fantastic the metamorphosis the hero undergoes. Obviously, fantasy poetics, persistent in its desire for integration, is not limited to one traditional way of depicting the hero’s identification. She uses the entire possible range of fantastic transformation of the main character

It is quite obvious that the actions of the fantasy hero take his image beyond the framework of the system of symbols that came from the spheres of both funeral and initiation rituals. It seems that here we are dealing with figurative structures whose roots go back to mystical initiation. In the context of mystical initiation, three constants stand out, consistently and rhythmically repeated in the image of the main character of Russian fantasy: the salvation of the world/person, unity with the highest deity, the vertical nature of the path.

So, we can conclude that in the structure of the image of the hero of the late twentieth century. systems of ideas are traced that go back, in addition to heroic initiation, to the archaic practice of initiatory shamanic ritual.

As reasons determining the specificity of the poetics of Russian fantasy of the late twentieth century, we name:

Firstly, the emergence of a mystical image in modern Russian fantasy may be connected with the phenomenon that emerged in the science fiction of the twentieth century. a trend in alien depictions where the cosmos can easily be populated with “beings of increasingly greater perfection until we achieve something virtually indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience.” Secondly, the psychological justification for the emergence of a sacred image in fantasy poetics can come, according to Yu.M. Lotman, from the tendency towards reversibility of plots.

If there is a plot about a hero moving from internal space to external space, acquiring something there and returning, “then there must also be a reverse plot: the hero comes from external space, suffers damage and returns.”

These are stories about the incarnation of God, his death here and his return. The third reason for the special tendency to create a consistent mystical image of a fantasy hero lies, it seems to us, in the special interaction of elements of folklore plots and folklore picture of the world, which is reflected with a certain degree of completeness in fantastic works. This interaction is such that any “element that falls into this system must “adapt” to it, it evolves until it takes on the form that the system requires, and one of the main requirements of folklore plots is the requirement of meaningfulness.”

HELL. Gusarova highlights the formulaic principle of a fantasy hero, which is “tied” to an irrational gift and its obligatory implementation in a conventionally fantastic world. “In addition,” she writes, “in connection with the existence of the irrational Gift and its necessary implementation in the “crucible of trials,” the principle of the world is defined as magical and divided dichotomously. In this regard, the magical world is the focus of an eternal battle. The hero, drawn by his gift , returns to this world...” Gusarova proposes to consider the principle of the hero and the principle of the world as the substantive principles of fantasy. One cannot but agree with this, but with a small clarification. Determining the content of the secondary world must be put in first place, since the creation of any work of fiction, according to modern science fiction researchers, begins with the “creation” of the world: “... first of all, it is necessary to create a certain world, arranging it as best as possible and thinking through it in detail.”

In addition to various races, fantasy also contains fantastic animals. They represent an image of the response of the surrounding world to the actions and worldview of the main characters in books. Let's try to understand the diversity of fantasy fauna:

The unicorn is the personification of purity, chastity and innocence, which are revealed only to those who themselves are also sinless and innocent. Represented in the form of a snow-white horse with a sparkling horn on its head;

Ent - a living tree that protects the elf race in case of attack. They are an example of loyalty and willpower;

chimera is a terrible and dangerous creature assembled from parts of animal bodies. Most often he appears before the reader with a huge snake head on a lion body. Represents an image of cunning and resourcefulness;

gargoyle is a giant marble bat that is obliged to protect its creator and serves as a messenger and scout for him. Represents devotion and sense of duty;

Modeus is a fire demon summoned by sorcerers for their own protection in dangerous situations. They are dutiful and obedient, but through deceit and duplicity they want to kill the one who disturbed them with his call and enslave his soul;

dragons are giant flying lizards, differing in the elements that gave birth to them, but united in their greed and love of money;

Wyverns are dead dragons brought back to life by dark magic and serve as guardians of undead necropolises. Doomed to the suffering of the afterlife, they are the focus of anger and thirst for revenge;

hypogryphs are akin to chimeras, since they have a winged lion's body with a bird's head. They serve as an example of loyalty and pride, deny betrayal and are devoted to their owners until death;

Gnols are cunning and cunning creatures born of experiments with magic. They look like humans, but with the head of a hyena. They often engage in robbery, but not knowing the value of money, they only store it without using it;

Taamag is a huge demoness, guardian of the other world. Thus, creatures from the fantasy world help the reader imagine the most likely reaction of others to any of his actions or opinions. This undoubtedly allows a person to determine his own course in life.

Let's look at the most popular fantasy races:

Elves - (alfe, elaf) Pointy-eared “children of the forest”, magnificent archers. They are divided into forest (Bosmer), high (Altmer), dark (danmer) and ghostly (Scaimer). Their “true” names, invented by science fiction writers, are given in parentheses.

Orcs are a race of green-skinned monsters who are still very stupid, but already very warlike.

Undead - (undead) are also known as "not dead". They represent the dead revived by the will of dark magicians-necromancers. They are perhaps the most beloved creatures of both authors and readers.

Vampires - everyone knows the legends about night hunters with white faces and black souls. Vampires can be classified as undead, but due to their popularity and antiquity, they have long become a separate species in fantasy.

Dwarves are a short people who live underground. They love gold more than anything in the world and are the best blacksmiths in the world.

Demons - (daimonium) a formidable race generated by the hatred of fallen angels and hellfire. They are cunning and two-faced, but at the same time they have their own code of honor, and they strictly follow it.

Elementals are a race created through experiments with the elements of fire, earth and water. Subsequently, the elements of these three principles created the air elemental. They serve as an example of friendship and mutual understanding, which is evident in their group work.

These and many other inhabitants of fantasy worlds can have a significant impact on a person’s worldview. They personify certain qualities of people and show them to the reader.

2.3 The influence of fantasy theory on the development of the literary process

The period of romantic fantasy remained in the second half of the past century. Fantasy is becoming more and more pragmatic. Authors who have chosen the following primitive scheme are incredibly popular: a) A non-stop “spinning” main character. b) Unlimited appearance of more and more formidable opponents, capable of resisting the overly “cool” protagonist for several pages or even volumes. Accordingly, the entire narrative boils down to non-stop “fights”. c) Minimizing the number of “beautiful” global and side quests, simplizing them, in order to enable the hero to move straightforwardly towards his main task - the next salvation of the dying World.

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