Information about the author:
Georgy A. Veligorsky
Georgy A. Veligorsky , PhD in Philology, Research Fellow, Scientific Laboratory “Rossica: Russian Literature in the World Cultural Context”, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4316-4630
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article discusses an intercultural phenomenon introduced into academic discourse by European scholars in the early 1990s and known as “archaeological imagination”; it is a situation when, through contact with some object from the past (whether man-made or natural), a person experiences a special, sacred, or even epiphanic experience, and, while remaining physically in the present, makes a kind of journey into the past and sees images of bygone times. This phenomenon, which attracts the interest of researchers from a wide range of scientific fields, can be traced in modern science fiction literature and is an effective mechanism for creating fantastic collisions. The article examines its genesis, identifies the factors that influenced its emergence in the second half of the 19th century, both social and cultural, and traces how the ideas outlined by Victorian writers (R. Jefferies, K. Grahame) were developed in 20th-century fantastic works (using the work of children’s writer W. Maine as an example).
Keywords: “archaeological imagination”, archaeology, fantastic space, timelessness, R. Jefferies, K. Grahame, W. Maine.
