E-mail: antonina.antonina282@yandex.ru Tel.: +7 (8422) 44-18-23
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PhD in Philology, Associate Research, The Center of Folk Culture of the Ulyanovsk Region
This article considers the fake miracle of a talking icon in F. M. Reshetnikov’s story “Nikola Znamenskii” (1867) in the context of traditional culture. The motif of the talking icon is often found both in old Russian literature and in the oral tradition (in fairy tales, non-fairytale prose, and spiritual poems). If in A. F. Pisemsky’s novel People of the Forties (1869) the motif of a talking icon is the basis of an edifying narrative, in Reshetnikov’s story, an example of the so-called ethnographic trend in literature, the episode about a phony miracle approaches a socalled “anti-legend.” The article discusses various contexts for the phenomenon of the “pseudotext” (quasi- or anti-bylichka [legend]), including as a response to certain artistic phenomena and as a negative reaction to religious belief. The analysis considers three models that differ pragmatically: that in which the narrator and the hero (participant, witness of the event) are equal in status (where “pseudo-texts” emerge based on parody); in which the narrator is higher in status than the hero; and where the narrator is lower in status than the hero (where “anti-texts” emerge that do not belong to culture of laughter). Reshetnikov manages to have all three models collide in the space of the story. Reading the text guided by only one of the models, does not, in our opinion, allow us to fully understand the author’s intention.
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