This monograph examines the phenomenon of the literary dream in English-language children’s literature, focusing on its structural, semantic and functional characteristics. Despite the prominence of dream episodes in children’s narratives, they have received little scholarly attention from linguistic and stylistic perspectives. The present study seeks to address this gap by exploring the literary dream as a distinct narrative and linguostylistic device.

The novelty of the research lies in its attempt to conceptualize the literary dream as a specific type of narrative structure with its own compositional patterns, motifs and stylistic features. Particular attention is given to the analysis of dream motifs and formulaic structures, which have not previously been examined in a systematic manner within linguistic scholarship.

The primary aim of the study is to investigate the structural and stylistic properties of literary dreams and to determine their functional role in children’s literature. To achieve this aim, the research pursues several objectives: to demonstrate that literary dreams constitute a distinct narrative form with unique structural and semantic characteristics; to identify and classify the functions performed by dream episodes within fairy-tale narratives; to analyze the dominant motifs of dream narratives and explore their narrative potential; to examine the relatively stable opening and closing formulae of literary dreams in comparison with those of fairy tales; to reveal the topological nature of literary dreams based on the specific features of the material examined; and to analyze the linguostylistic devices commonly employed in dream narratives and their functional significance.

The research is based on the methods of structural and intertextual analysis, which allow for a comprehensive examination of dream narratives within their broader literary and stylistic contexts.

The theoretical value of the study lies in its contribution to the fields of text interpretation, narratology and stylistics as well as its potential to serve as a theoretical foundation for further research on literary dreams. From a practical perspective, the findings may be used in university lectures and seminars devoted to narratology, stylistics and children’s literature.

The monograph consists of an introduction, four chapters, endnotes, a conclusion and a bibliography. The first chapter reviews major theories of literary narrative and argues for the recognition of literary dreams as a distinct narrative type. The second chapter analyzes the fundamental structural units of dream narratives, namely dream motifs. The third chapter examines the opening and closing formulae characteristic of dream narratives and explores their structural, semantic and functional roles. The fourth chapter aims to demonstrate that the literary dream itself can function as a stylistic device. It shows that a dream episode may embody different stylistic effects and can operate in ways similar to metaphor or metonymy, thus adding additional layers of meaning to the narrative. The conclusion summarizes the principal findings of the study.­