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Mythopoetics in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s prose: The novels “Solovyov and Larionov” and “Justification of the Island”

https://doi.org/10.26907/2782-4756-2025-81-3-176-181

Abstract

The article identifies the function features of mythopoetics in the prose of the Russian writer Evgeny Vodolazkin. The purpose of the work is to show the specifics of mythopoetics in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s prose based on his novels “Solovyov and Larionov” and “Justification of the Island”. The main categories of mythopoetics in Vodolazkin’s work are the connection of different historical eras (“inter-epochality”), mythological timelessness, and the moral category perceived through the prism of the Christian worldview. In addition, the article examines the images of the main characters and the features of the chronotope, which are also mythopoetic, used to highlight the writer’s conceptual vision of history and time. The specificity of Vodolazkin’s authorial myth is consistent in the two selected novels, although the writer develops the history and time categories differently in them. In the novel “Solovyov and Larionov”, history is presented as the interpenetration and interlacement of two historical eras. In the novel “Justification of the Island”, Vodolazkin addresses the history of a mythical non-existent Island. The synthesis of fictional and documentary elements is manifested in different ways – in “Solovyov and Larionov”, the documentary aspect is presented from the point of view of scientific discourse, in “Justification of the Island” – by means of a chronicle narrative. However, the documentary element in the named works only emphasizes the mythopoetic nature of fiction in these novels.

About the Author

A. O. Salakhova
Saratov State University
Russian Federation

Salakhova Albina Olegovna, graduate student,

83 Astrakhanskaya Str., Saratov, 41001



References

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Review

For citations:


Salakhova A.O. Mythopoetics in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s prose: The novels “Solovyov and Larionov” and “Justification of the Island”. Philology and Culture. 2025;(3):176-181. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.26907/2782-4756-2025-81-3-176-181

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ISSN 2782-4756 (Print)