scholarly journals Christian Context of Historical Novel (Zakhar Prilepin’s “Abode”)

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-199
Author(s):  
O. Yu. Osmukhina ◽  
A. D. Karpov ◽  
E. A. Beloglazova

The specificity of the synthesis of elements included in the historical narrative, and Christian motives, images in the novel of the largest contemporary Russian prose writer Zakhar Prilepin is comprehended in the article. The relevance of the article is due to the need to build a coherent and consistent history of the development of Russian literature over the past two decades, an important part of which is the legacy of the popular writers. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian literary criticism “Abode” is considered from the proposed perspective: its genre specificity is analyzed in a Christian context. It has been established that, despite the presence of elements of documentary, adventurous, love-psychological novels, in terms of genre, “The Abode” can be attributed to a historical novel (it depicts a turning point in Russian history through a conflict between historical figures and fictional “average” heroes, combines historical facts and fiction). At the same time, an interest in eternal moral issues, problems of life and death, conscience and duty, love and fidelity in their Christian understanding becomes a feature of Prilepin’s understanding of the historical theme. In their work, the authors of the article used comparative historical, biographical, socio-cultural methods, as well as the method of a holistic analysis of a work of art. 

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-248
Author(s):  
Ajay K. Mehrotra

One of the challenges in writing about the history of American law and political economy is determining the proper amount of historical context necessary to make sense of past institutional and organizational change. Where to begin and end a historical narrative and how much to include about the broader social, cultural, political, and economic conditions of a particular place and time are, of course, questions that accompany any attempt to reconstruct the past. How one addresses these issues invariably shapes the motives and intentions that can be ascribed to historical figures. In their eloquent and thoughtful comments, Christopher Capozzola and Michael Bernstein have urged me to think more carefully about these issues, about where my story begins and ends, about the broader social, political, and material circumstances that animated World War I state-building, and about the seemingly apolitical ideas and actions of the Treasury lawyers who are the center of “Lawyers, Guns, and Public Moneys.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 91-110
Author(s):  
В.С. ПУКИШ ◽  
И.С. ХУГАЕВ

В статье рассматривается роман основоположника «революционно-пролетарской словацкой литературы», «словацкого Горького» Петера Йилемницкого (1901–1949) «Компас в нас» (1937). Актуальность данного рассмотрения определяется уже тем, что в романе значительное место уделено советской (русской, киргизской) и кавказ­ской (осетинской, в хронотопе, заступающем советские рамки) теме, – и при этом произведение Йилемницкого до сих пор не было переведено на русский язык и осталось, в общем, вне поля зрения отечественного литературоведения и литературной кри­тики. Отдельные, связанные с осетинской темой, главы романа в переводе на осетин­ский язык, выполненном в свое время Хасаном Малиевым и Сафаром Хаблиевым, пу­бликовались в советское время в североосетинской периодической печати, и, поскольку одним из героев Йилемницкого выступает друг Петера Йилемницкого известный осе­тинский писатель Чермен Беджызаты (1898–1937) и действие первого плана происхо­дит именно в Южной Осетии, которую, в рамках сюжета, посещает повествователь, роман «Компас в нас» несколько раз упоминался в осетинском литературоведении. Одним из авторов данной статьи (В.С. Пукишем) роман Йилемницкого в «осетин­ской» части в последнее время переведен на русский язык с языка оригинала (редакто­ром перевода, необходимого в виду этнокультурной фактуры, выступил И.С. Хугаев); соответственно, здесь, помимо необходимой биографической и библиографической справки, вводятся в литературно-критический оборот обстоятельства творческой истории романа «Компас в нас», его основные идеи и образы, а также его оценки в словацком литературном процессе; впервые на основе оригинального текста тракту­ется архитектоника, образная система, идеология, общие изобразительные приемы и идейно-эмоциональная тенденция текста Петера Йилемницкого. The article examines the novel Kompas v nás (Compass Inside Us) by Peter Jilemnický (1901–1949), the founder of “revolutionary proletarian Slovak literature,” and “the Slovak Gorki.” The topicality of this review can be proved by the fact that the novel devotes much attention to the Soviet (Russian, Kyrgyz) and the Caucasian (Ossetian – in the space-time going beyond the Soviet period) themes – however, by now it has not been translated into Russian and thus it has remained mostly out of the eye of contemporary Russian literary criticism. At the same time, the Ossetia-related chapters of the novel translated into Ossetian by Khasan Maliev and Safar Khabliev, were published in the North Ossetian press, and due to the fact that one of the central characters of the novel is Chermen Bedzhyzaty (1898–1937), a known Ossetian writer and a friend of Peter Jilemnický, and that the foreground of the story takes place in South Ossetia visited by the narrator, Compass Inside Us has more than once been mentioned by Ossetian literary critics. One of the authors of this article (V. Pukish) recently translated the ‘Ossetian’ part of the novel from Slovak into Russian (I. Khugaev edited the translated text as required by the ehtnocultural texture); this is why, the circumstances of creative history of the novel, its main ideas and images, and the assessments given to it by Slovak literary critics are hereby introduced into the scientific discourse in addition to the required biographical and bibliographical references. Based on the original text of the novel, the authors of this article are for the first time discussing the architectonics, imagery, ideology, general representational devices, and ideological and emotional trends of the text by Peter Jilemnický.


Author(s):  
Galina V. Mikheeva ◽  

In 2021 we mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of O. D. Golubeva, a bibliologist, Doctor of Philology, whose entire working life relates to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library. For 35 years she was the deputy director of the library for scientific work. The article recreates the biographical sketch of the scientist, reveals the significance for Russian literary criticism of her research on the publishing activities of M. Gorky and several publishing houses of the early twentieth century. Special attention is paid to the role of O. D. Golubeva in the creation of a whole series of works devoted to the history of the Library, including biographical sketches of the figures of the Imperial Public Library. The role of the scientist in the creation of the school of historical biography in the National Library of Russia is determined.


1946 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Karpovich

The name of Vladimir Soloviev, insofar as it is familiar to the Western world, is known as that of a philosopher and religious thinker. This was, of course, the field in which he was particularly prominent. Russia can boast only a few formal philosophers (as distinguished from philosophizing novelists, poets or historians), and among those Soloviev is probably the most outstanding. Moreover, in the history of modern Russian religious thought, he occupies a central position, serving as a connecting link between the mid-nineteenth century Slavophils and such contemporary writers as Berdiaev and Bulgakov.But Soloviev's was a versatile and many-sided nature, and many other aspects of his life and activity deserve attention and study. He wrote interpretive essays on Russian poetry, some of which were landmarks in Russian literary criticism, and he was a poet himself—not a great poet, perhaps, but one with a strongly marked individual character.


Author(s):  
Ingo Stöckmann

AbstractThe paper examines the inter-discursive relations between the naturalistic novel and early sociology in the late nineteenth century and consequently unfolds a yet-to-be-told history of modernity concepts commonly used in literary criticism today. The narrative and aesthetic implications of these concepts have often been discussed. However, their unquestioned inevitability on the level of representation and an understanding of modern culture can be observed and investigated against this historical background in particular. This allows for two tentative assumptions: First, the logical inconsistencies of the historical narrative inspected here have a continuing impact on ›classical‹ theories of modernity in general and affect their fundamental conceptual formation. Second, this kind of terminology of modernity was never modern in the first place.


Inner Asia ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Garnaut

AbstractChina’s leading Muslim writer, Zhang Chengzhi, published in 1991 an historical novel about a Sufi Islamic community, entitled The History of the Soul. The novel covers the two hundred years leading up to 1919, the year of the May Fourth Movement that is conventionally considered as the beginning of modern Chinese history. During this period, the Sufi community that is the subject of Zhang’s novels, called the Jahriyya, was involved in a series of violent clashes with the Qing imperial state. The author weaves through his historical narrative of a Chinese spiritual community the story of his own spiritual crisis, which he underwent in the 1980s and finally overcame through his encounter with the Jahriyya.


2020 ◽  
pp. 449-472
Author(s):  
Mihail A. Robinson

The article analyzes the methodological views of the academician V. N. Peretz, an outstanding Russian researcher and teacher. Refusing to follow the canons of the cultural-historical school of Russian literary criticism, in his works “From Lectures on the Methodology of the History of Russian Literature” (Kiev, 1914) and “A Brief Essay on the Methodology of the History of Russian Literature” (Petrograd, 1922) the researcher tried to find new approaches to the analysis of literary works. He believed that “the history of literature examines and studies the formal side of the works of verbal creativity, its evolution, leaving the cultural historian to study the content, the ideological side of the monuments of the past as such.” Peretz’s judgments were similar to those adopted by the followers of the OPOYAZ school (The Society for the Study of Poetic Language), and even had a certain influence on the development of formalism at the initial stage. This circumstance was noted by such researchers close to this research community as V. M. Zhirmunsky and its active members like Roman Jakobson. The relationship of Peretz’s theoretical positions with the methods of the Russian formalist school caused criticism from the followers of “Marxist” methodology in the 1920s. In the disputes between the formalists and the “Marxists”, Peretz clearly sympathized with the former believing that they were trying to “resurrect philology.” Peretz himself characterized his “Methodology” as “not Marxist” and had faint hopes for the possibility of its publication, although he continued to work on it. However, he never finished and published the extended version. His “Short Sketch” was reprinted twice abroad before being printed again in his homeland in 2010, 88 years after the first edition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 221-235
Author(s):  
A. E. Kachorovskaya

This article focuses its attention on the motive of resistance characteristic of Austrian literature of the 19th - 20th centuries, which is considered from the point of view of the historical and literary relationship with the myth of Prometheus. The history of the issue is reviewed. A selective analysis of the versions of the Promethean myth in the Austrian historical and literary context of the 19th-20th centuries, which is part of the pan-European literary and philosophical heritage, is given. The stylistic and genre originality of Austrian interpretations of the myth of Prometheus is proved on the basis of a study of a number of works. The artistic reception of the image of Prometheus in the poem by Z. Lipiner "Liberated Prometheus", little studied in Russian literary criticism is considered in the article. Attention is paid to the version of the Promethean myth in the literature of Austrian Art Nouveau (on the example of F. Kafka's little prose). The issue of conflicting trends in the development of Austrian literature of the 20th century, affecting the interaction of the motive of resistance with the Promethean myth, is investigated by the example of M. Gruber's essay. The correlation of the Austrian versions of the motive of resistance with the myth of Prometheus is proved. The results of the study confirm the significance of the Promethean myth in the Austrian reception of the 19th-20th centuries, which has more pronounced features of drama and theatricality in relation to the European context.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 88-101
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Golubkov

This article examines the genre of “secret history” which gained widespread currency in France after the publication of the book Anecdotes of Florence: or, A Secret History of the House of Medici (1685) by Antoine de Varillas. The preface to the book gives an overview of the theory of the genre that welcomes representation of hidden, sometimes “dishonorable” or “insignificant” premises of important events, usually ignored by official historiographers who tend to focus on the façade of their protagonist’s life. Authors of such “secret” stories are advised to use gossips obtained from the “royal” circles and find their way into the studies and bedrooms hidden from the eyes of the others. The article shows the impact that elements of Varillas’s poetic style (ethnographic flair, the topoi of bedroom and “cabinet,” focus on the human body etc.) had on the texts of “secret” memoirs and notes by François-Paulin Dalairac, Esaias von Pufendorf, Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez, and others. A more detailed interpretation demonstrates how historical narrative degraded into fictional prose and in many respects anticipated — together with other sources analyzed in the article — a formula of the historical novel a la Walter Scott.


Author(s):  
O.M. Buranok ◽  
◽  
N.E. Erofeeva ◽  
I.B. Kazakova ◽  
O.V. Sizova ◽  
...  

The article examines the works of E. Haywood, as the author of novels, the publisher of three women's magazines that laid the groundwork for the culture of women's creativity in English literature of the XVIII century. Her name is called among the first authors of a women's novel, which is still interpreted from a gender perspective in modern science as a sociocultural phenomenon that represents the world through the eyes of women. Nevertheless, the authors of the article note the serious influence of men's literature on the work of the writer who was passionate about politics and social reforms. Special attention is paid to such genre modification of the novel as "secret histories", the predecessor of "the novel with the key". It is noted that what is new in "secret histories" is the shift in the angle of perception of the text itself, filled with facts about certain historical events and people, which were taken from various kinds of insinuations, as a rule, it had nothing to do with the real history, but attracted the reader with their variations in the relationships of the characters. Slander becomes the subject of the depiction, and its possessors represent heroes (antiheroes) through the prism of the certain moral values, including the state ones. For the first time in Russian literary criticism, the authors acquaint the reader to the "secret histories" of E. Haywood, novels “The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania”(1726), “Memories of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia” (1725 – 26), “The Advantures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijavea; a preAdamitical History” (1736) in the context of women's prose in England in the XVIII century. The analysis of the novel “The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania” as the most vivid example of the "secret histories" by E. Haywood is offered. The material of the article will be of interest to the specialists, as well as to those who are interested in the development of the female genre of the novel in the literature of England during the Enlightenment.


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