Izvestiya of Saratov University.
ISSN 1817-7115 (Print)
ISSN 2541-898X (Online)


genre conventions

The confrontation of savageness and civilization in Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy Western Red Country

In the novel Red Country the famous British author Joe Abercrombie carries out a genre experiment combining in one book the features of such distant and incongruous genres as fantasy and Western. He constructs in his imaginary world a territory with all specific characteristics of a Western chronotopos and actively uses typical plot devices of the Western. But on the level of ideas the plot of Red Country comes into a conflict with the basic values of the Western, instilling the clichés borrowed from this genre with a unique author’s meaning.