Russian classical literature in readers' online communities

On the Internet, readers of Russian literature create online communities (fandoms), in which users experiment with classical literature and construct their own versions of source texts. Although each separate fandom is dedicated to a particular classical work, authors (ficwriters) compare different classical texts and construct a common artistic space based on those. The article deals with the content and boundaries of the online corpus of amateur works based on Russian classical literature. The research subject is fanfics in which artistic worlds of several classical works are combined (crossovers). There are distinguished two forms of modeling a common artistic space in fandoms dedicated to Russian classical literature: 1) through the character's outlook and transformation of the traditional loci; 2) through the narrator's outlook and creation of an unstable space. The first form involves separating space into ‘public' and ‘intimate'; the second form is based on the division of space into ‘sacred' and ‘ordinary'. To describe the connection of fanfics based on classical literature but published in different fandoms, we use the concept ‘superfandom', which is a corpus of fanfics based on different classical works where texts are united by the types of transformation of original sources and by common strategies of readers' reception. This binary typology of space reflects the features of perception of Russian classical literature in communities originally created by popular literature fans. On the one hand, ficwriters regard classical literature as an object of honoring; on the other hand, they use the poetics of space from different classical sources to show their own artistic preferences, including acceptance or rejection of Russian classical literature.