CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS IN 20TH?21ST CENTURY RUSSIAN FANTASY WRITING (ARTICLE 2)

The article looks at the various aspects of appropriating the Christian traditions by Russian fantasy writing. We show that the Christian tradition has most significantly revealed itself in the genre of fantasy writing which is in high demand among early 21st century readers. Both the content and the formal poetics of this tradition have been taken into account here. One of the typical fantasy protagonists is a hero yearning for God, which is a familiar staple of Russian literature. By default fantasy deals with demonolog, thus becoming closely linked to Christian tradition of the struggle against evil. Demon (or devil) being a popular character in fantasy writing, the forgotten traditions of Old Russian literature get re-actualized in 20th and early 21st century and the demonological image includes both the demonic and the human. We conclude that contemporary fantasy authors develop their own versions of the Christian tradition, removing the conflict between the “faith” and “invention” typical for fantasy writing.