META-GENRE OF FANTASY IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN SCIENCE

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of interpreting the phenomenon of fantasy in modern science. Fantasy has spawned many discussions related to the definition of its sources and genre nature, the relationship with the myth-folklore tradition, the problems of classification, the specifics of extra-literary functions and many others. We consider fantasy to be one of the branches of speculative fiction, which naturally formed into an independent industry in the second half of the twentieth century. Initially having appeared as a genre, fantasy subsequently has outgrown this category. Today we can say with confidence that fantasy is a meta-genre, which has its own structure of modeling the world and unites various literary genres (novel, novelette, lyric poetry and others) and types of art (sculpture, cinema, animation, graphic arts, painting, and others) with a common subject of artistic representation.
The constant dynamics of fantasy leads to the increase in the number of topics (heroic, epic, historical, magical, scientific, romantic and mystical) and, as a result, the readership as well. For example, it can be classified by age criterion (children – adult), by geographic criterion (urban – countryside), and even by gender principle (men – women fantasy). There are several approaches presenting different aspects of the phenomenon: classifications by the type of adventure or problematic-thematic principle (Ramin Shidfar or Sergey Alekseev and Mikhail Batshev). Such a diverse scientific interest in fantasy, multiple attempts to classify and systematize it, as well as going beyond the boundaries of the literary genre, testify to the ongoing process of its development.