READER'S FANTASY AS THE KEY CONCEPT IN C. S. LEWIS' LITERARY THEORY WORKS AND FICTION

The article poses the problem of the relationship between the key idea of the theoretical and literary views of C.S. Lewis, a writer, scientist and theologian of the mid-twentieth century, regarding the role of the reader and the reader's imagination for a work of art and his own artistic creativity, firstly, and the development of fantasy literature in the second half of the twentieth century, secondly. The aim of the study can be formulated as the possibility of defining fantasy literature of the second half of the twentieth century through the idea of the reader's co- creation and construction of worlds based on the theoretical views of C.S. Lewis as a scientist and an author who influenced the development of fantasy literature almost on a par with J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings. Based on C.S. Lewis' articles "On Stories", "On Three Ways of Writing for Children", "Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism", "The Meaning of Fantasies", and his famous cycle of children's fairy tales, or children's fantasy The Chronicles ofNarnia, with elements of comparison with the later works of fantasy, the ideas of Lewis himself are determined: the role of a fascinating plot, which is typical primarily for light or adventure literature, but is necessary for reading as such; defining the boundaries of the genre within light literature itself and the related idea of disinterested fantasy; co-creation and construction of worlds as a step towards a work of fiction itself. In Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia the positive characters read adventure books and apply them to themselves, and the world of Narnia in some ways looks like a world of collective children's play or fantasy. One cannot help but see that, in order to illustrate his views, Lewis ignores the very principle of dividing literature into high and popular, or ancient and modern, equally turning to Gulliver's Travels, The Wind in the Willows, Coleridge's poem and Apuleius's Metamorphoses, and in other cases to Haggard's romances, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. The article shows that although in some cases the definition of the boundaries of the genre, which was obvious to Lewis, turned out to be irrelevant for the later fantasy literature and/or children's fairy tales, nevertheless, his other idea, the need for co- creativity and imagination to create worlds, became the key one both for his own works and for the study of fantasy literature in general. Clive Lewis, like other literary theorists of his time, foregrounds the idea of the reader, thus foreshadowing the future studies of fantasy literature.