On the verge of literature and music: intermedial codes of Clifford Simak’s fantasy

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to trace the functional significance of musical codes that make up a peculiar fictional quasi-reality in constructing the time-space hyperreality of the genre of fantasy. It is also important to determine the specific features of intermedial musical insertions in the metagenre format of Clifford Simak’s prose. Musical allusions and ecphrases, which are characteristic of the writer’s style, are presented as the “anthropologized” images of musical trees, “musical powers”, musical instruments, dances, the music of mechanic composers, inter-galactic festival, musical time machine, etc. The methodology of the investigation under discussion is based on studies of intermediality and theory of reception. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that for the first time in the history of Ukrainian Humanity Studies, the genre of fantasy is identified as a significant fragment of the evolutionary process of the integral genre system. The sequential generating of literary genre formats in the field of Cultural Studies is regarded as an immanent peculiarity of a complicated literary process, which can be revealed only in case a reader possesses a relevant receptive background. An essential marker of genre evolution of science fiction is the prevalence of intermedial insertions, which substantiates the metagenre essence of C. Simak’s fantasy. The research has been carried out with due regard to C. Simak’s literary method, the latter having transgressed from science fiction to fantasy, thus proving that a consecutive change of the genre strategy is possible even within the activities of a single author.