Izvestiya of Saratov University.
Philology. Journalism
ISSN 1817-7115 (Print)
ISSN 2541-898X (Online)

Literary criticism

Genre modifi cations and “search for a genre” in Timur Kibirov’s novel The General and His Family

Genre defi nition of Timur Kibirov’s The General and His Family caused disagreement among literary critics. The range of opinions concerning the defi nition of the novel’s genre include historical novel, family saga, cento novel, the novel about psychology and morality of the late years of the USSR. This article is concentrated on the novel’s genre defi nition. The genre framework of the text is the epoch-standard local family story depicted against the background of massive Soviet history.

Early works by Andrey Nemzer: To the problem of defi ning the author’s status

In the article the publications of the literary critic and historian Andrey Nemzer which appeared in the 1980s in the journal Literaturnoye obozreniye (Literary review) are analyzed. The articles of this period dealt more with historical and literary works and to a smaller degree with literary-artistic ones. The aim of this work is to identify the author’s status. A range of arguments is off ered proving that Nemzer’s contributions on the pages of the journal are strictly of literary-critical nature.

John Woolman’s image in the English non-fi ction in the 1850–1940s: Hagiographical motives

John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker preacher, is known in the history of American literature for his spiritual autobiography titled The Journal (1774). The 1850–1940s is a period when Woolman’s autobiographical character attracts the attention of British and American critics and essay writers. They publish a signifi cant number of non-fi ction texts, which contain numerous elements of hagiography in Woolman’s portraiture, depicting him as a saintly proto-abolitionist fi gure.

N. V. Gogol’s motives in the Russian plays at the turn of the 20–21st centuries (Pannochka by N. Sadur / Viy by V. Sigarev)

The attention of the playwrights and theatre to Gogol’s prosaic text opens new forms of understanding of the classical text, and allows to find in it both deeply personal author’s content and something relevant to the society of a diff erent time. In the plays Pannochka by N. Sadur and Viy by V. Sigarev, the transformation of Gogol’s motives reveals the deep meanings of the story. These are Gogol’s favorite motives of a vague fear of women, eschatological forebodings, the fear of oblivion.

Studying the works of Vasily Shukshin in Chinese literary criticism

The subject of this work is the main themes and ideas of Russian country prose – the school that most fully refl ects the essence of the Russian national mentality. Ethical issues are an integral part of the works of Vasily Shukshin. V. Shukshin’s novellas represent the wisdom, virtue and life experience of a Russian villager, an attempt is made to identify the spiritual foundations. Writers strive to fi nd the foundations of the peasant world. Vasily Shukshin’s works are known not only in Russia, but all over the world.

Meta self-description and self-psychologism as meta-poetic principles of A. I. Solzhenitsyn

The autobiographical character of Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre, inseparable nature of ethical and aesthetic views, have shaped the author’s unique aesthetics. From the point of view of the author of this article, eliciting the meta-poetic principles defi nes the way of comprehension of Solzhenitsyn’s artistic world, of his ‘phenomenon’. The article presents the analysis of two of Solzhenitsyn’s signifi cant meta-poetic principles: self-meta-description and self-psychologism.

‘Stream of consciousness’ technique: Bergsonian interpretation of psychology in the prose by V. Nabokov

The following article off ers a theoretical interpretation of Nabokov’s aphorism on Joyce’s inner monologues. Nabokov supposed that thinking is extraverbal and cannot be fully embodied in a word. He assumed that James Joyce was wrong to materialize the stream of inner life in a rigid verbal form. For Nabokov, thinking as an uninterrupted continuum of psychological states, should be opposed to the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique and should be moved towards the lyrical synthetism.

The place of landscape in the narrative structure of Kryukov’s works

The purpose of the article is to analyze the main functions of the landscape in the works of F. Kryukov. Nature in his narrative system acts as an independent object of portrayal and a toolkit for description, as the place of the character’s residence and the contemplated landscape, as an integral picture and a set of contrasting elements. The emphasis is placed on the narrative role of the landscape in the development of the author’s point of view, the structuring of the artistic space, and plot formation.

Jack London and “the sharks of the East Coast”: The story of the writer’s business relationship with The Cosmopolitan magazine

This article traces the history of Jack London’s business relationships with The Cosmopolitan magazine, which are reconstructed on the material of the scientifi cally commented The Letters of Jack London (1988).

Specifi c features of implementing the system of oppositions of landscape imagery in the stories about childhood by I. S. Shmelev 1906–1912

This article examines the features of how the system of semantic oppositions of landscape images is objectifi ed in the stories about childhood by the writer of the Russian expatriate community Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, created in 1906-1912. The research material constitutes the works The Sergeant, On Urgent Business, One Night, Gingerbread (the Doctor’s Story), Festive Heroes, Stars, Timid Silence, related to the pre-emigration period of the author’s ouevre.

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