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COMMON PART

Project Number24-78-10093

Project titlePoetics of space: cross-cultural connections between Russian and foreign fantastic literature

Project LeadVeligorsky Georgii

AffiliationA.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature the Russian Academy of Sciences,

Research area 08 - HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 08-452 - Literary science

Keywordspoetics, fantastic literature, children's literature, fairy, fairy tale, fantasy, myth, locus

PROJECT CONTENT

Annotation
Within the framework of this project is proposed, for the first time in Russian literary criticism, a comprehensive analysis of the poetics of space in fantastic literature. The theme of space in the fantastic literature is not new. Throughout the 20th century, this topic was repeatedly addressed by researchers from a variety of fields, but it was never conceptualized structurally and comprehensively. The goal of our research is to fill this gap, with an emphasis on domestic literature. Fantastic literature is characterized by a paradoxical personification of space - the perception of it as a living being, mobile, with memory, past, character, moral character. The theme of animate space appears: the image of a “living world”, reacting to the presence, actions, words of heroes, teaching them or telling stories; The image of living roads, literally carrying the hero, was first conceptualized by F. Rabelais, etc. In such a space, the edge of times becomes thinner, they overlap each other: this is how the foundation of the future castle, its proud building and its mossy ruins coexist. An “oneiric model” of the world emerges – a palimpsest world, “all of whose epochs, intact and animating each other, continue to live in the same place” (M. de Certeau, “The Invention of Everyday Life”). In essence, space becomes a demiurge, creating itself; time here can flow either forward or backward, as in an inverted hourglass (cf. the concept of “kairos-chronos”, developed in the works of M. Nikolaeva). Once the events have taken place in it, they take place forever, becoming timeless, actualizing themselves for the heroes and readers, which gives such a space a sacred coloring (the same idea is present in the Divine Liturgy). With careful analysis, one can be convinced that the properties and signs of fantastic space are built into a coherent system, identifying and tracing which is the main goal of our research. In our study, which involves the analysis of cross-cultural connections, the emphasis will be on the works of domestic philologists (Yu.M. Lotman, V.N. Toporov, A.V. Mikhailov, O.A. Bogdanova, etc.) but based on conceptual and terminological apparatus and concepts developed by Western researchers, phenomenologists and literary scholars, such as: “slippery time” (J.R. Townsend), “palimpsest world” (M. de Certeau), “archaeological imagination” (N. Campbell), “domus” (J. Van Buck); also Ts. Todorov, M. Foucault, K. White, L. Salisbury. Of particular interest are theoretical writers (R.L. Stevenson, K. Grahame, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis) and their Russian reception. The issue of artistic language in the context of space seems important: for example, some images that appear in modern foreign fantastic literature were first proposed by domestic writers (for example, Gogol’s image of “the earth curling up like a scroll” from the story “A Terrible Vengeance”); a number of metaphors of space in Russian literature represent a parallel (arbitrary or unintentional) to the corresponding images of Western literature, but have a unique sui generis coloring (for example, an analogue of the image of “blue hills”, which is found in the literature of Great Britain, Germany, the USA, etc. as a metaphor for the Kingdom of Heaven, growing up, sacred experience, death, in Russian literature are blue mountains or blue forest). In addition, it is planned to comprehend the interest of Western researchers in the studies and concepts of M.M. Bakhtin, E.M. Meletinsky, N.P. Antsiferov, S.M. Loiter.

Expected results
a comprehensive study of the poetics of fantastic space; the results of the study can be used in a number of humanities disciplines; introduction into scientific circulation of a number of new literary names (authors and works); identifying important literary and cultural connections; understanding a number of new techniques that can be used in the domestic humanities; development of own research concepts

REPORTS