Reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov as Fantastic Literature

Abstract

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a much-studied classic of Russian literature, often discussed in relation to its political, philosophical, and religious themes. However, very little critical attention has been paid to another major strand of the novel: its use of the fantastic and its place within the fantastic canon. This essay demonstrates how The Master and Margarita performs the functions of a fantasy novel as described by Rosemary Jackson in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Jackson asserts that fantasy is a means of expressing “the unsaid and unseen of a culture.” However, the assumed culture for much of her theory is a “secularised culture produced by capitalism,” i.e. a western and Anglocentric conception of culture. I demonstrate how her theory both functions and requires adaptation within the Soviet-Communist context of Russia in the 1930s. In doing so, I situate Bulgakov within the genre of fantasy and suggest ways in which fantastic theory can shift its focus away from the Anglocentric.