Traditions of Magical Realism in M. Shishkin's <i>Letter Book</i> and N. Abgaryan's <i>Simon</i>

Abstract

The article describes the traditions of magical realism in M. Shishkin's Letter Book and N. Abgaryan's Simon. The research involved comparative, mytho-poetic, hermeneutic, formal, and structural methods. V. I. Tyupa's theory of artistic discourse and F. Schlegel's idea of irony served as the basic theory in identifying the motifs associated with magical realism and generated by the ironic type of artistic completion. The term of magical realism covers works that belong to very different literary movements. The authors used the ironic type of aesthetic completion to explain similar elements in different poetics of magical realism fiction. The traditions of magical realism in the twentieth-century fiction revealed the following features: an ironic type of artistic integrity; dual worlds and miracles; fantasy intertwined with reality; myths, traditions, and legends; archetypes (father, savior, eternal lover, etc.) and symbols (tree, sea, etc.); unmotivated fantasy; fantastical timeline with no clear boundaries between the past and the future; a highly rhythmical pattern, etc.