The thesis is the first comprehensive research in national and international literature studies of Jean Dutourd's short fiction (three volumes of morality and fables, a collection of philosophical tales and a collection of novelle, satirical and humorous "guides" for writers of anonymous letters and for journalists), which makes a significant part of artistic heritage of this outstanding French writer and has a great artistic and aesthetic value as the ingenious phenomenon of modern literature. The thesis deals with the analysis of four short fiction collections by Jean Dutourd: "The End of the Redskins" ("La Fin des Peaux-Rouges", 1964), "The Decline of Wolves" ("Le Cr?puscule des loups", 1971), "A friend who wishes you well" ("Un ami qui vous veut du bien", 1981), "Pearls and Pigs" ("Les Perles et les Cochons", 2006). Their specific genre features, the problem field and theme content, genre specificity and poetics have been defined and described. Authorial and publishing definitions of short fiction genre forms from above-mentioned collections by Jean Dutourd have been specified; the factors of their transformation and modification have been singled out, including the tendency for reconsideration of well-known fables, fairy-tales and myths. The role and means of satirical and humorous, and ironic modes of narration that resulted in the development of the new genre forms in Jean Dutourd's literary writings have been identified. The theme and genre analysis of Dutourd's short fiction collections "The End of the Redskins" ("La Fin des Peaux-Rouges"), "The Decline of Wolves" ("Le Cr?puscule des loups"), "A friend who wishes you well" ("Un ami qui vous veut du bien"), "Pearls and Pigs" ("Les Perles et les Cochons") has proved that even though stated by the author as morality and fable, they belong to much wider scope of genre models, such as fable, fairy-tale and myth paraphrases of novella type, joyous morality, apologue, morality apologue, novella-type parable, anecdote-type novella, urban fairy-tale. The collection "A friend who wishes you well" ("Un ami qui vous veut du bien"), named as a short manual for anonymous letter writers, has been substantiated to belong to the cycle of the original author genre of "anonymous letter" fiction.
