The Medieval Tradition in the Prose of V. P. Astafyev: Genre and Cycle

The article contributes to the study of implementation of the genre traditions of the Russian Medieval literature in the prose of the second half of the twentieth century, specifies categorical coordinates and challenges research approaches, artificially separating a single movement of Russian literature from the time of Ilarion and Avvakum to the present day. On the example of V. P. Astafyev’s book “Zatesi” which united the writer's small prose on the principle of cyclization of works based on the common stylistic and thematic features, the author comes to the conclusion about the artistic relevance of this technique, which originates in the medieval collections, in the aspiration of their compilers to work “outside of genre traditions” (D. S. Likhachev). But if in the Middle Ages this aspiration is more due to the subject-thematic tasks, in the New and Modern times the super-genre unity of the collection, of the book is a result of strengthening the compositional role of the author in their structural organization and the individualization of his image.