Contemporary Christian Tale for Children: Questions of Poetics and Problems

The article deals with the problems and poetics of Christian fairy tale for children in contemporary Russian literature. The relevance of this issue is motivated by a number of polemic, problematic statements about the form and the content of Christian literature in general, and children's literature in particular. The research reveals features of Christian children’s literature, gives characteristics of its genres and defines the place of the fairy tale as a genre that most satisfies young readers’ needs. The central theme of Christian fairy tales is the theme of realization of existence of God, distinction of good and evil, understanding of sin and punishment. This problem-thematic complex is embodied mainly at the level of composition and character system of fairy tales. During analysis two types of Christian fairy tales are distinguished, generally based on the folklore canon of the fairy tales about animals. In the first type main characters are animals and they help people magically. The predominant didacticism of fairy tales of the first type is realized in schematization of animal images and absence of plot development. The peculiarity of the second type is based on traditional cyclical adventure story and absence of open characters’ convention which is a common feature to parable-allegorical fairy tales