Abstract:
Slavic fantasy is a kind of fantasy genre that embodies the most
characteristic features of mass literature in general, but has its certain
specificity. Its main features are rooted in the traditions of fairy
tale and fantasy literature.
Fantasy, in fact, is also strong in its mythological origin: in the
view of some researchers fantasy should be elevated not to the level
of the fairy tale, but directly to myth. The focus of fantasy is always
set in “either redifined canonical system of myths, or author’s original
mythopoetic concept, the most important feature of which is
creation of a secondary world (holistic view of the world and human
being), where the man is a microcosm in the macrocosm system”.
Fantasy builds a model of the world revealing such features
of mythological thinking as the inseparability of humans from the environment, the personification of good and evil, the humanization
of nature, the identification of microcosm and macrocosm, spatial
and temporal syncretism, binary logic.
Most works of Slavic fantasy build a mythological vision of the
world. E.M. Meletinsky noted that refracting the accepted forms of
life, the myth creates some new fantastic “higher reality”, which is
perceived as the primary source and ideal prototype.
The general mythological basis in the works of the studied genre
is implemented in Slavic mythology. The artistic world of Slavic fantasy
in its structure corresponds to the architectonics of cosmogonic
myths.
In Slavic fantasy, the authors create a mythological model inspired
by traditional mythology: they describe the stages of the
world creation, appearance of the gods, legends and stories recalling
the origins of the main character. The exploitation of mythological
motifs in fantasy genre quite clearly confirms the following trend:
“mythology is becoming a functional subsystem of modern fiction” .
