The research aims to identify the features of the functioning of the fantastic in J. L. Borges’s collection “The Garden of Forking Paths” by considering the means and techniques of creating the fantastic. The paper presents a genre specification of the collection’s stories, an analysis of the narrative strategy, chronotope, and main motifs and images. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the description of the mechanisms for creating the fantastic in the collection of early stories by J. L. Borges “The Garden of Forking Paths”, namely, in determining how and for what purpose Borges introduces unreal components into the narrative. As a result of the research, it was revealed that the use of the fantastic performs several functions: plot-forming, critical, prognostic, and educational. The realization of these functions occurs on different levels of the work: starting from the synthesis of genres (short story – detective story, literary essay – literary mystification), continuing with a special approach to time and space, the introduction of oriental images and motifs, and ending with the use of post-irony. The fantastic becomes for Borges a way to understand reality: reflections on deep ontological and moral questions are like a labyrinth of thought, where there is no single correct answer. Relying on the category of the fantastic, the writer explores the essence of time, creativity, person, and their being.
Hong Pan (Fri,) studied this question.