Russian ideas. Discursive organisation of Vladimir Sharov’s novel “Return to Egypt”

Abstract

The article investigates the discursive organisation of novels by our contemporary writer Vladimir Sharov (1952–2018). As a model of such an organisation, typical of V. Sharov’s works in general, we study the structure of the novel “Return to Egypt” (2013). It combines the thematic discourse of national consciousness and culture (on the role of Russian literature, on the cyclical nature of Russian history, on the significance of its split, on the nature of Russian revolutions, etc.), which are translated into the author’s novelistic discourse. According to the author, palimpsest interposition of discourse pieces creates a model of national identity. In the work, discourse analysis is carried out in the paradigm of M. Foucault’s interpretation of discourse. Discursive interactions determine the historiosophy of the author, based, as the analysis has shown, on the ideas of Russian religious philosophy. Within the novel, the discursive model works as a hierarchy, where the metanarrative (usually based on a biblical motif or other mythologeme) is immersed in the diverse pieces of national history discourse, manifesting their archetypal meanings.