Fairy Tale as an Object of Interpretation in "The Witcher" of A. Sapkowski (Based on the First Two Short Stories Collections)

Various game and TV adaptations, the latest of which are those released in 2018 and 2019, have been sustaining the interest towards A. Sapkowski’s The Witcher both culturally and scientifically up until now. Previous studies in Russian language discussed the issue of mythological motives in The Witcher and no serious Russian study, devoted to exploring the topic of the role fairy tale plays in Sapkowski’s poetics was found. This study aims to fill this gap, using the method of the comparative approach and the motif analysis from Literary Studies. Examining several short stories from both The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, the first two books of the series, it scrutinizes how the folklore-based elements in the narrative shape the inner system of Sapkowski’s work and what influence it has on the characters. The results indicate that global patterns of the fairy tale in A. Sapkowski's short stories become a way of individual artistic thinking, where the general becomes particular, the typical becomes occasional. In this way, the text becomes more open to multiple interpretations - a special role here is played by understatements, a typical technique of the postmodern tradition. As the narrative extends beyond the framework of the fairy tale scheme, becoming more concrete and saturated with additional meanings, the tale becomes a form of freedom for creative transformation. Fairy tale enters the text at two levels: when it is part of the culture of the fictional world and the characters themselves are aware of the existence of fairytale motifs, or it remains at the narrative level, used to explore narrower, individual problematics.