The present article examines the role of tragic and idyllic mode in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel Medea and Her Children. The idyll and the tragedy are not only literary genres but particular “modes of perception” (F. von Schiller) or aesthetic modalities (V. Tiupa) ‒ broader categories that determine the structure of the world presented. A novel – as a syncretic genre – may include several aesthethetic modalities (modes) provided that one of them became an aesthetic dominant. In Medea and Her Children by Lyudmila Ulitskaya one can find noumerous references to the ancient myth of Medea abd to its literary version – a tragedy by Euripides. Those references can be indetified mainly in the construction of main character (Medea Sinopli) and plot structure (martial infidelity of Medea’s husband). Space and time indicators in the novel have also a lot in common with the ancient tragedy chronotope. However a close reading of the text shows that Ulitskaya constructed the fictional world presented according to the rules of idyllic chronotope (M. Bakhtin). Tragic modality was evoked merely to be discredited. Traditionally fragile idyllic world and characters in Ulistkaya’s novel turned out to be strong enough to neutralize destructive potential of a tragic mode.