The artistic model of resistance to tyranny in fairy fantasy by Sashko Dermanskyi
Based on the novellas “The king of Beeches, or the Secret of the Emerald Book” and “The Apple Growing Kingdom”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2311-259x.2026.2.4Keywords:
fairy fantasy, resistance to tyranny, artistic model of the world, initiation, dystopia, mythopoetics, Ukrainian literature for children and young adultsAbstract
This article examines the artistic model of resistance to tyranny in Sashko Dermanskyi’s fairy fantasy, focusing on the stories The King of Beeches, or the Secret of the Emerald Book and The Apple Growing Kingdom. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to conceptualize the anti-totalitarian potential of contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and young adults, particularly in contexts where the fairy-tale genre is combined with dystopian, war-related, existential, and axiologically charged meanings. The subject of the research is the mechanisms of artistic modelling of tyranny and resistance within fairy fantasy. The central problem addressed in the article lies in identifying the genre tension between the playful nature of the fairy tale and the systemic representation of totalitarian evil. In the analyzed texts, tyranny is depicted not merely as a personalized antagonist but as an institutionalized repressive order encompassing political organization, collective memory, linguistic practices, social roles, and ethical foundations of existence.
The methodological framework of the study is based on an interdisciplinary approach combining mythopoetic, genre, and structural-semiotic analysis with elements of psychological and axiological interpretation. To analyze initiatory models and deep character transformations, the study draws on Mircea Eliade’s concept of initiation and Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the Shadow archetype. The comparative method allows the two stories to be interpreted as variations of a single narrative invariant of resistance to tyranny.
The findings demonstrate that The King of Beeches realises a model of a “fairy-tale dystopia of memory”, in which resistance to tyranny is associated with the restoration of historical and ontological norms through counter-memory and sacred artefacts. In The Apple Growing Kingdom, this invariant is transformed within a chronotope closer to the reader’s everyday experience, foregrounding processes of dehumanization, conformism, and moral corrosion under prolonged totalitarian pressure. Particular attention is given to the axiological triad “Dignity–Memory–Strength”, which functions as the ethical core of resistance and a prerequisite for preserving subjectivity.
The scientific novelty of the article lies in its systematic analysis of the balance between fairy-tale playfulness and the initiatory potential of the narrative, as well as in treating the analyzed stories as a unified conceptual complex.
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