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• Images of the East in the Short Fiction of Ivan Bunin

  16 p.

  Kata Juracsek

  Views:

  447

  The article examines the images of the East in the short fiction of Ivan Bunin. With the help of the narrative model of Jan van der Eng, consisting of three basic thematic levels (action, characterization, geographical and social setting) we read and arrange the works of Bunin through the prism of postcolonial criticism. On the one hand, we will consider the arguments of traditional postcolonial studies; on the other hand, we will also take into account the postcolonial theory regarding the “second world” (Russia, Eastern and Central Europe).We start our analysis with the texts in which images of the East are only featured on one thematic level, gradually directing our attention towards the short stories in which these images determine the whole semantic structure.

• Biblical parallels in Chekhov’s short story Murder

  Kata Juracsek

  Views:

  304

  The paper explores biblical allusions in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s short story Murder. It aims not merely to identify certain biblical themes, but, through an analysis of Chekhov’s text and its biblical parallels, to attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the main character’s changing worldview (a question interpreted by researchers in different, often conflicting ways). The paper also points to motivic and semantic connections between the biblical text and the internal struggle of faith that affects Chekhov’s heroes. On one hand, two Old Testament stories from the Book of Genesis are examined: the fratricide of Abel by his brother Cain, and Jacob acquiring first-born status and the paternal blessing instead of his brother Esau, as well as Jacob’s struggle with the angel. On the other hand, certain sections of the New Testament Gospel according to Matthew are explored, as referenced in Murder, which point to two groups of ideas: the argument between Jesus and the Pharisees concerning proper religious practice and the true essence of faith, and Jesus’s allegory about the camel, as well as his words on murder, which both ratify and amend the Ten Commandments. Through the prism of these references, Yakov’s (and also Matvey’s) internal journeys are interpreted as a shift between the law of the Old Testament and the teachings of the New Testament.

• Litvins as a Medieval Baltic-Slavic Ethnic Group in Kastuś Tarasaŭ's Novel “The Pursuit of Grunwald”

  Victor Khalipov

  Views:

  81

  Ethnically colored characters based on stereotypical representations of different peoples occupy an important place in the fiction of any nation. At the same time, works of art may depict not only representatives of modern nations, but also those of ethnic groups that have now disappeared, and sometimes even those that never existed at all. A special literary discipline, imagology, is concerned with the study of this issue. In contemporary Belarusian literature, the Litvin ethnotype occupies an important place, as it is a relevant component of certain types of modern Belarusian identity. Its presence is particularly noticeable in works on historical themes. One such text, significant for the national literary tradition, is Kastuś Tarasaŭ's novel The Pursuit of Grunwald (1986), thematically devoted to the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 between the combined forces of Poland and Lithuania and the knights of the Teutonic Order. In this work, the imago of the Litvin occupies a fairly clearly defined position as the self-image, serving to describe his own people and his homeland in the past, in relation to which characters of all other nationalities are positioned as hetero-images. In Kastuś Tarasaŭ's work,  Lithuanians are a Slavic-speaking ethnic group of mixed Baltic-Krivich origin, diversified in terms of religion (Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and pagans), whose representatives make up the military and political elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The author attributes the following characteristics to them: brave, harsh, cruel, stubborn, persistent, fierce, reckless, short-sighted, and unreasonable. These traits do not fully correlate with the current stereotypical perceptions of modern Belarusians about themselves, which had developed by the end of the 20th century.