The article is devoted to the linguistic interpretation of a fictional text through archetypes and symbols usage. It gives a review of different approaches to the problem of interaction of folklore and literature, definition of basic terms, such as ‘archetype’, ‘symbol’, ‘mythologem’. Fairy-tale archetypes and symbols are decoded and interpreted in Byatt’s short stories taken from the story collection Sugar and Other Stories. The archetype fairy-tale images of Cinderella, evil stepmother and witch have been analyzed in the stories Racine and Tablecloth and The Dried Witch. The paper focuses on the possibility of applying folklore approach to the interpretation of the above-mentioned archetype images in A.S. Byatt’s stories. Special attention is paid to the role of symbols and stylistic devices and expressive means in decoding the fairy-tale images. The analysis of the extracts from fiction reveals individual peculiarities of folklore borrowings usage by different writers and allows to decode their intentions and to see the depth of the content in fictional texts. The relevance of the research comes out of insufficiency of researches devoted to peculiarities of folklore borrowings in modern English and American literature. To achieve the goal and objectives of the research the following methods were used: the method of reviewing and analysis of theoretical literature on the subject; contextual and intercontextual analyses to identify the relationship between the texts; folklore method, the method of interpretation analysis, stylistic analysis. The practical value of the research: the results of the paper may be used by students in the course of Stylistics of the English Language, Lexicology and during practical classes of Analytical Reading