Hoffmannian traditions in domestic urban fantasy

The purpose of the research is to identify the elements of Ernst Theodor Hoffmann’s poetics used and rethought by the writers, whose works can be attributed to the subgenre of domestic urban fantasy. Its specificity is determined by the fact that the fantasy chronotope here is shaped by the urban space, where the supernatural events potentially not motivated by scientific knowledge take place, and that its poetics is dominated by the motif of the double world (where two worlds - the ordinary and the supernatural - coexist in parallel with each other), and some elements of urban folklore. The works of Hoffmann and the books of M. and S. Dyachenko, O. Kozhin, V V. Orlov, H. L. Oldie, A. Yu. Pekhov, E. A Bychkova, and N. V. Turchaninova were selected as objects of research. The stated goal implies addressing several tasks. The first one is to determine the specific features of Hoffmann’s romantic hero, inherited by the authors of domestic urban fantasy. The second task is to reveal the features of the urban chronotope inherent in the works of Hoffmann and urban fantasy. The third one is to reveal the set of motifs typical for the works of the studied writers. And the final task is to discover the features of the emerging detective genre (for example, in Hoffmann’s novel Mademoiselle de Scuderi) and its characteristic gameplay nature, which is reflected in the studied fantasy subgenre. The relevance of the study is due to the need to investigate urban fantasy in the context of world literature. The research novelty lies in the fact that the reception of Hoffmann’s creativity by the authors of fantasy has not been studied so far. The author uses the method of motivational analysis and intertextual analysis, as well as the method of receptive aesthetics. It turns out that in urban fantasy the creative reception of Hoffmann has been experiencing the second round of popularity (after the 1830s and the 1840s), with the image of a doppelganger being especially productive and demonstrating new forms of embodiment in urban fantasy.