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Abstract:

The article deals with the first two books by Danish writer Peter Høeg: the novel “The History of Danish Dreams” (1988) and the collection of short stories “Tales of the Night” (1990). Researchers mostly considered Høeg as a postmodernist writer; the poetics of his works demonstrates a clear focus on imitation and play with meanings. The influence of Latin American magical realism on his early work is obvious. He consciously introduces into his novel and collection of short stories the features that are inherent in Latin American literature but not characteristic of European magical realism: the opposition between the miraculous and the real is removed, since Høeg’s heroes have consciousness that is not typical for “civilized” Europeans, but is inherent in the characters of Latin American novels. His works create a special inner world living according to its own laws, where reality can turn into fantasy, and fantasy turns out to be reality, since the idea of any boundaries in the intra-textual reality is eliminated, their conventionality is emphasized, and internal logical relationships remain undefined.