fantasy

The article analyzes the novel “La Poupée” (“Doll”) by a French writer of Italian origin Jean Galli de Bibiena, which introduced into the literature of the 18th century the theme of the doll mentoring an adult. The doll character combines, on the one hand, the ideas of the era about “man-machine”, the fascination with “live” automations, on the other hand, the tradition of depicting fairy-tale creatures, concentrated in Montfaucon de Villar’s book “Count Gabalis”. The writer sets up a kind of an artistic experiment through the play of sensuality and sensitivity.

The article analyzes the most significant foreign studies of sci-fi and fantasy in order to define the place of linguistics in this sphere of research, to highlight relevant linguistic problems that require further research. Two main development directions of linguistic studies are emphasized, and the necessity of the further specifically linguistic study of certain problems is established.

The research focuses on fantasy literature peculiarities and points out the difficulties of translating the texts of such genre. The comparative analysis of folklore and mythical names translation is implemented as illustrated by two variants of translation of the literary work.

Based on myths, epic, romance and adventure literature, classical fantasy books often depicted their heroes as warriors physically fighting evil. Nowadays the British writer Joe Abercrombie, whose works belong to the so-called grimdarkfantasy, depicts wars questioning the value of violent heroic deeds and the concept of a ‘hero’ itself.

The article focuses on the special features of fantasy literature and points out the difficulties of translating the texts of such genre. The comparative analysis of people’s names’ translation is implemented on the example of two variants of translation of one literary work. The article also introduces the frequency statistics of translation strategies, techniques and transformations used to transfer the author’s magic worldview into its translation counterpart.

The article considers the chronotope of the novel Rough Draft by S. Lukyanenko, its special features being due to the combination of two genres – urban fantasy and conspiracy novel. Even though both genres contain some common motives and figures, in the work by Lukyanenko urban fantasy genre prevails, because the main character himself mainly forms the chronotope: slows down the time, creates new locations by the power of his mind (rooms, buildings etc.).

The article contains the analysis of German children’s and young adult fantasy authors sharing a common interest to books as an important plot device. The focus of interest is on a considerable number of common themes, problems, character types and values that appear in the works of all the three authors, which allows to offer for these works such catch-all terms as ‘book text’ and ‘books about books’, and consider them as parts of a unique trend in German fantasy literature.

The article analyzes an early play by Evgeny Schwarts Adventures of Hohenstaufen. The text poetics features are distinguished on the levels of the action development, character images, language humor. The genre dominating idea is identified. The author reveals how the vaudeville, the fairy-tale, and fantastic, and the satiric elements in the text interact. In the focus of the author’s attention is the motive of a ‘usual’ miracle/magic reflecting the aesthetic principle of the playwright.