UDC

821.161.1

Authors

Eleonora F. Shafranskaya
Moscow City Teacher Training University;
2-y Sel’skokhozyaystvennyy proezd 4, Moscow, 129226, Russian Federation;
e-mail: shafranskayaef@mail.ru

Abstract

This article analyses A. Chudakov’s novel Darkness Falls upon the Worn Steps in the aspect of interdisciplinary contextual relations. This study aimed to prove the importance of introducing the novel into the teaching process of both schools and universities. The paper considers various contexts of the novel: historical, cultural, everyday, folklore, and alien ethnic. These contexts – each separately and in combination – provide deeper insight into the Soviet chronotope and the human life in the mid-twentieth century. Thus, the proposed course of analysis allows us to conclude that a literary work can be considered as a material for anthropological research or philological anthropology. In particular, the author conceptualizes numerous folklore inclusions in the narrative discourse and differentiates pseudo-folklore (official folklore, used by the authorities as ideological propaganda) and folklore proper (uncensored folklore, expressing the age-old, beyond the control from above, understanding of the events by the twentieth-century person). In the novel, all sorts of skills developed in the course of the traumatic Soviet history create a picture of everyday life of the mid-twentieth century. The rhythm of Soviet history and of the novel’s structure is organized by such elements as war, persecution, exile, deprivation and restriction of all kinds. These aspects of the chronotope are presented as memoirs of real and fictitious eyewitnesses, major and minor characters, placing Chudakov’s novel among numerous valuable testimonies about the history, culture and everyday life in the twentieth century. In addition, the article dwells on the semantics of the novel’s title and on its main character, the narrator’s grandfather.

Keywords

A.P. Chudakov, philological anthropology, semantics of the context, historical context, cultural and everyday context, folklore context, alien ethnic context

References

1. Bogdanov K.A. Peremennye velichiny: Pogoda russkoy istorii i drugie syuzhety [Variables: Weather of Russian History and Other Topics]. Moscow, 2014. 368 p.
   
2. Bocharov S.G. Sinyaya ptitsa Aleksandra Chudakova [The Blue Bird of Aleksandr Chudakov]. Bocharov S.G. Filologicheskie syuzhety [Philological Topics]. Moscow, 2007, pp. 518–526.
   
3. Etkind A.M. Tolkovanie puteshestviy: Rossiya i Amerika v travelogakh i intertekstakh [Interpretation of Voyages: Russia and America in Travelogues and Intertexts]. Moscow, 2001. 496 p.
   
4. Gurvich I.A. Postigaya Chekhova (Rets. na kn.: Chudakov A. Mir Chekhova. Vozniknovenie i utverzhdenie. M., 1986) [Comprehending Chekhov (Review of the Book: Chudakov A. The World of Chekhov. Origin and Establishment. Moscow, 1986)]. Voprosy literatury, 1987, no. 10, pp. 242–247.
   
5. Putilov B.N. Fol’klor i narodnaya kul’tura [Folklore and Folk Culture]. St. Petersburg, 2003. 464 p.
   
6. Bogdanov K.A. Povsednevnost’ i mifologiya: Issledovaniya po semiotike fol’klornoy deystvitel’nosti [Everyday Life and Mythology: Studies on the Semiotics of Folklore Reality]. St. Petersburg, 2001. 438 p.
   
7. Medrish D.N. Literatura i fol’klornaya traditsiya: Voprosy poetiki [Literature and Folklore Tradition: Questions of Poetics]. Saratov, 1980. 296 p.
   
8. Egorov B.F. Predislovie [Foreword]. Medrish D.N. Literatura i fol’klornaya traditsiya: Voprosy poetiki [Literature and Folklore Tradition: Questions of Poetics]. Saratov, 1980, pp. 3–5.
   
9. Kostyukhin E.A. Dzhambul i sovetskaya fol’kloristika [Jambyl and Soviet Folklore]. Bogdanov K., Nikolozi R., Murashov Yu. (eds.). Dzhambul Dzhabaev: Priklyucheniya kazakhskogo akyna v sovetskoy strane [Jambyl Jabayev: Adventures of a Kazakh Akyn in the Soviet Country]. Moscow, 2013, pp. 15–23.
   
10. Bogdanov K., Nikolozi R., Murashov Yu. (eds.). Dzhambul Dzhabaev: Priklyucheniya kazakhskogo akyna v sovetskoy strane [Jambyl Jabayev: Adventures of a Kazakh Akyn in the Soviet Country]. Moscow, 2013. 308 p.