Abstract
This paper is concerned with the fantastical elements in "A Wild Sheep Chase" and "Pinch Runner Memorandum" which are analysed from the point of view of fictional world theory. Murakami Haruki and Ōe Kenzaburō are frequently thought of as writers that differ in generation and that stand in a contrastive relation to each other but curious similarities can be seen in the aforementioned works.
Both writers use in their works the tumultuous historical fact of 60s student movements that ended without an effect on society (Murakami as a background to the main plot, Ōe as the setting of his novel) and in both novels the main antagonist is a dying right-wing leader. Furthemore, world of both works contains as their key element supernatural/fantastical elements such as characters possesing supernatural powers or events that contradict physical laws.
It cannot be by accident that both of these writers use fantastical elements that contradict mimesis, that is frequently considered as basis of literature. What kind of meaning is hidden by a world structured in this way? The fictional world theory is an important tool for answering questions such as these.
Fictional world theory is a literary theory based on works such as Lubomír Doležel's "Heterocosmica" (1998). It serves as a tool for analysis of things such as the structure of the world of a literary work, its rules, transworld identity (that is the relationship between the actual and a fictional world) and thus it is a powerful methodology for analysis of fantastical elements.
Thusly I intend to compare both works, analyse the position of fantastical elements in both works, their specifics and their function in the fictional world and discuss the relationship of the supernatural "power" and the "power" within society. In this paper I will show the importance of fantastical elements in both works and explain how the supernatural elements as means of expression serve to represent the events of historical reality.