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  • Grotesque and paradox: Female and male narratives in Victor Erofeyev’s novels
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    12

    This paper examines the narrative dynamics of two novels by Victor Erofeyev. The female discourse of Russian Beauty is characterized by the vertical dynamics of grotesque, while the discourse of the autobiographical narrator of Good Stalin is characterized by the dynamics of paradox, a horizontal movement between opposing truths. In both novels the Soviet aesthetic canon is undermined through the dynamics of narrative that denies the possibility of a singular truth.

  • The Function of the „Author’s Mask” in “The Soul of a Patriot or Various Epistles to Ferfichkin” by Yevgeni Popov
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    118

    Playing with the author’s figure is not a new device in Postmodernism. One may refer to “Either/Or” by Søren Kierkegaard or “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by Alexander Pushkin, or “The Fiery Angel” by Valery Bryusov. At the same time the foreword of “The soul of a patriot or Various epistles to Ferfichkin” proves that in Postmodernism this game is taken to the next level. The author who abandoned their fictional space and renounced theirauthorial role during Modernism returns and re-takes their formal place. However, he does not do it seriously but hiding behind the mask of the author – says Malmgren, introducing the term of the author’s maskinto literary discourse. In this analysis I state that Popov, using the author’s mask, turns the traditional interpretationof the author’s role inside out.  I conclude that, on the one hand, the author’s mask ridicules the concept by which the author’s biography is the key to his work. On the other hand, it makes fun of Vinogradov’s view, according to which there is always an abstract author hiding in the text who carries its real meaning. I come to the conclusion, that Popov uses this narrative technique to emphasise that it is impossible to look at a literary work as an arsenal of ultimate truths and statements. 

  • One can only Understand a Journey by Embarking on it
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    97

    The present article is devoted to a new field of research in humanities–the „hygiene of culture” and its leader – Olga Szűcs. The formation of an international researh community is a long and difficult procedure. In the course of the development of the theoretical and the empirical basis of the „hygiene of culture” owing to Olga Szűcs’s personal qualities,the scientific and ethnic norms of a collective of researchers working in different fields of humanities have been set. The results of the research have been published in collective monographs. The paper considers Olga Szűcs’s main scientific contributions to this field and the role she played in this scientific project.