Elements of Fairy Tales and Mythology in the Novella by A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky “Monday Begins on Saturday”

The article examines the relationship between myth, fairy tales and science fiction, focusing on the category of miraculous. Myth creates an ontological basis for a fairy tale, defines basic narrative structures, and creates archetypal characters. A fairy tale, in turn, recycles and adapts mythological material to specific historical conditions, combining the “fantastic” and the “magical”. Science fiction structurally corresponds to the archetypal schemes of a fairy tale, but reality is being remythologized. Science and technological achievements are endowed with a “miraculous” motif, which was previously characteristic of myth and fairy tales. The author analyzes the transformation of fairy-tale motifs and mythological archetypes in the context of the science fiction work by A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky “Monday Begins on Saturday” (hereinafter – PNVS). The purpose of the work is to show the relationship between myth, fairy tales and science fiction; to identify and analyze the functions, characters of fairy tales and mythology in the story “Monday Begins on Saturday”. Methods: hermeneutic analysis of the text, which allows to identify stable fairy-tale motifs and archetypes. Special attention was paid to identifying the functions of a fairy tale according to V. Propp. A method of analysis and synthesis used to systematize the data obtained and identify semantic connections between phenomena; a religious approach used to consider the phenomena of “miraculous”, “fantastic” and “magical”, as well as to analyze the mythological context. Results: during the analysis, it was revealed that science fiction, in particular the novel by A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky’s “Monday Begins on Saturday” uses, but transforms, mythological and fairy-tale structures and archetypes. The miraculous, as a key category, develops and moves from the sacred and inexplicable in myth, through the magical in a fairy tale to the scientifically grounded. The novel for “junior researchers” «Monday Begins on Saturday» is an example of remythologization. Finally, scientists and staff of the institute are endowed with magical features, and scientific experiments become miraculous. The analysis of the story through the prism of the functions of a fairy tale reveals stable narrative patterns.