On the artistic singularity of the play by A.N. Ostrovsky “The Snow Maiden” in the context of the mythopoetic worldview

The work is devoted to the character and contextual levels analysis of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Snow Maiden”. The Berendey country as the embodiment of the pagan world is not only a place for the major events development, but it also symbolizes a special era in Russian history: the contact of two mutually exclusive principles – monotheism and polytheism. Evidences of these principles are the gospel parallels presented by A.N. Ostrovsky through a love sense, which the inhabitants of the Berendey country interpret in a pagan, but not in the Orthodox aspect. Using synthesis and analogy, which are the leading research methods of this work, it is possible to prove the contextual closeness of Snow Maiden and Mizgir, characters, originally isolated from the society of the Berendey country, and also to identify the specifics of application of the grotesque, the main literary device used by A.N. Ostrovsky. It is proved that A.N. Ostrovsky’s play is close to V. Hugo’s novel “Notre Dame de Paris” as a work where the grotesque seriously determines the author’s intention. The idea of the play is also analyzed in the format of continuity, as evidenced by the parallelism between “The Snow Maiden” and “Thunderstorm” – in these works the characters sometimes have similar formulations, that is why typification concept analysis is seems acceptable, which allows to analyze the characters in the context of the theory of K.G. Jung’s archetypes. Therefore, the considered task of this work is searching for bringing together contextual beginnings and analysis of the play’s chronotope – system-forming aspects that allow us to characterize the work not only as an extravaganza, but also as a text that occupies a special place in the playwright’s creative heritage. This research will be of great interest to everyone who studies the work of A.N. Ostrovsky in the format of literary studies, as well to researchers of pagan and orthodox motives in Russian literature of the 19th century. 

pagan world, Christianity, grotesque, chronotope, love, literary continuity, freedom