фэнтези

The review is dedicated to the book written by a Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of History of Slavic literatures at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Department of Slavic studies and Central European studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, member of the Union of Writers of Russia, a well-known science fiction scholar, and president of the Association of Science Fiction Researchers, E. N. Kovtun.

In the history of culture and literature, women have always played an important role. Numerous myths, folklore and literary works show the importance of female characters in the content, functional and artistic solution of various problems. In recent decades, attention to the “women’s issue” has certainly increased: representatives of various scientific disciplines are trying to identify the essence of the phenomenon of “true femininity”. In popular literature, a new type of heroine is being formed – a girl undergoing her own set of challenges (quest).

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.

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 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 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.