Bogun M. The sensemaking function of the comic and the fantastic in the novels by Kurt Vonnegut

The thesis is the first comprehensive study in Ukrainian literature of the comic and the fantastic as the sensemaking elements of art synthesis in the novels of 50-70th by K. Vonnegut. On the basis of system-integrated, comparative-typological, cultural, hermeneutic approaches and the methodologies of conceptual art synthesis developed, the comic and the fantastic, their interaction, their aesthetic and sensemaking role were analyzed in the most representative from this view novels. The conclusion was made that Vonnegut's novels are the complex and multi-level system of the techniques of literary reality reflection, including the categories of the comic and the fantastic which play a leading role in their structure and their humanistic message, that allows to consider the writer to be one of the most brilliant and original representatives of the conceptual art synthesis of the second half of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st centuries.