This comparative project investigates different representations of the sandman between the 19th century and the 20th century. My discussion focuses on Romantic texts, in particular E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 literary tale "Der Sandmann." While the traditional scholarship on Hoffmann uses both psychoanalytical and feminist approaches, I show how Friedrich Schlegel's concept of chaos and Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the postmodern sublime help us to understand Hoffmann's complex narrative structure. I argue that in Hoffmann's tale there is no unified sandman figure. However, different storytellers in the tale shape the sandman's various depictions. In a way, the sandman figure becomes a fluid character whose enigma the narrative's structure sustains. Paul Berry's 1991 stop-motion animation "The Sandman" visualizes Hoffmann's narrative. However, the film also reintroduces a unified sandman figure that is characterized by uncanny strangeness. My analyses both of Hoffmann's literary and Berry's cinematographic narrative show that their complex structures allow for ceaseless interpretations. This leads me to conclude that fantastic narratives lend themselves to insightful and critical ponderings.

В настоящей работе проводится структурно-языковое изучение современной литературной волшебной сказки. Дается определение сказки как фольклорного и литературного жанра, систематизируются основные жанровые особенности сказки. Обобщая методологические аспекты изучения сказки, автор дает дефиницию и типологию волшебной сказки. Проводится анализ функций персонажей и волшебных средств в сказках. Рассматриваются основные языковые особенности сказки и способы ее перевода. Материалом для исследования служат сказки из сборника современных зарубежных авторов «The Kingfisher Book of Magical Tales», переведенного с английского на русский язык автором магистерской диссертации. / In this master’s thesis, a structural and linguistic study of a modern literary fairy tale is carried out. The definition of a fairy tale as a folklore and literary genre is given, the main genre features of a fairy tale are systematized. Summarizing the methodological aspects of the study of fairy tales, the author gives the definition and typology of a fairy tale. The analysis of the functions of characters and magical means in fairy tales is carried out. The thesis also considers the main linguistic features of the fairy tale and the ways of its translation. The material for the study is fairy tales from the collection of modern foreign authors "The Kingfisher Book of Magical Tales", translated from English into Russian by the author of the master's thesis.

This thesis aims to cover basic typological similarities and differences in the work of Karel Čapek and Jiří Mahen, specifically in their fairy-tales. First, we present the characteristics of fairy tales viewed from different perspectives - in terms of theories about its origin, in terms of shaping during the history, from the position of terminology and definition of the genre as a complex. We also create a summary of specifics for both types of fairy-tale - literary and oral, because we want to find and define the similarities in which is literary fairy-tale close to oral ones, while using Propp´s Morphofology of fairy-tales. In the next chapter we will try to reconstruct the concurrent resonance of both works. In the end we will create a summary of all achieved knowledge and their comparison.

La présente thèse étudie le développement historico-esthétique du conte littéraire polonais au XXe siècle sur la base d’un corpus qui s’étend de la Jeune Pologne à 1989, en se limitant à la littérature pour adultes. Cette étude se combine avec une réflexion théorique sur la nature du conte en tant que forme littéraire et propose l’outil de la convention pour cerner sa dynamique et sa polymorphie. Dans le conte, nous distinguons quatre niveaux de convention :le monde représenté, les motifs, la narration et le style. Les modèles conventionnels de ces quatre catégories, exposés dans le premier chapitre, servent de repères pour évaluer l’apport des écrivains à la convention du conte dans les deuxième et troisième chapitres. Le deuxième chapitre met en évidence le dynamisme historique qui anime le conte au XXe siècle dans la littérature polonaise, tandis que la troisième partie dégage de façon transversale les principales tendances esthétiques dans l’écriture féerique. Ainsi, le fil de la convention permet de tracer un panorama historique ainsi que de dégager les tendances esthétiques majeures du conte dans la littérature polonaise du XXe siècle, se révélant par là un outil pertinent dans l’étude du conte littéraire. Notons enfin que cette étude du conte littéraire offre un nouveau regard sur quelques uns des écrivains majeurs de la littérature polonaise du XXe siècle :B. Lesmian, W. Gombrowicz, St. I. Witkiewicz, Br. Schulz, T. Konwicki, St. Lem, Sl. Mrozek, Cz. Milosz et bien d’autres. /<p><p>Based on a wide corpus of adult literature, the present doctoral thesis is devoted to the historical and esthetical development of Polish literary fairy tale in the twentieth century from the Young Poland to the year 1989. It proposes at the same time a theoretical reflection on the literary form of fairy tale. Accordingly the convention is used as the main tool to apprehend its dynamics and its polymorphism. In the fairy tale, four conventional levels can be distinguished: represented world, motives, narration and style. Presented in the first chapter, the conventional models of theses four categories are used as reference points to gauge writers’ contribution to the fairy-tale convention in the second and the third chapters. The second chapter highlights historical dynamism of the fairy tale in Polish literature of the twentieth century, while the third part draws transversally the main esthetical tendencies in fairy-tale writing. Therefore the convention allows to outline an historical panorama and to define the main esthetical tendencies in Polish literature of the twentieth century, which proves its relevance in the study of literary fairy tale. Moreover this study of literary fairy tale takes a fresh look at some of the most important Polish writers of the twentieth century: B. Lesmian, W. Gombrowicz, St. I. Witkiewicz, Br. Schulz, T. Konwicki, St. Lem, Sl. Mrożek, Cz. Milosz. <p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The aim of this study is to draw new perspectives to the theoretic approach towards the complex nature of the modern fairy tale genre and its transformation. The study is exemplified by two books by Alan A. Milne about Winnie-the-Pooh (1926-1928), Tove Jansson’s eight books about the Moomintrolls (1945-1970) and Eno Raud’s four books about three funny creatures called “Nakstitrallid” in Estonian (1972-1982). In this thesis, I examine the disputable problem of defining the fairy tale genre in modern literature and refer to the history of the genre and storytelling tradition that have indirectly inspired all three authors in their decision to turn for fairy tale as a genre. Applying the poetical analysis, I argue that these authors contributed to the continuity of fairy tales by creating the link between folkloric heritage, novelistic literary expression and children’s imagination. This study can therefore be considered as topological, however it does not pretend to introduce the complete systematic definition of the genre as the thesis’ format does not allow such in-depth investigation. In the first chapter, ‘Archaic world stimulation in modern fairy tale’, I examine the dominating literary categories that refer to the folk fairy tale intertext: Bakhtin’s concept of ‘chronotope’ – category of time and space, system of fictional allegoric characters and category of fantastic.  In the second chapter, ‘Modern fairy tales from perspective of children’s literature’, I analyze the books of Milne, Jansson and Raud in the scope of narratological and aesthetic categories of children’s literature. The folkloric laughter intertextually reproduced by naïvism of the Moomins, the Naksitralls, and Winnie-the-Pooh’s friends, while folkloric collective hero is presented by universal harmony of a happy family and child-like protagonists. I came to the conclusion that poetics of folklore fairy tale still exists in these books through the intertextual dialogue. Modernism as literary method re-evaluates folkloric aspects such as nonlinear time, the blurred boarders between individual and cosmos, material and spirit, text and reality. Every new artistically unique fairy tale world resembles the new stage of the genre development. The more innovative is the story, the more sophisticated can be its poetics.