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Vol. 6 No. 4 (2018)
Space and Culture, India

Themed Issue

Christmas and Christmastide in the Interpretation of Russian Writers of the XVIII-XX Centuries

https://doi.org/10.20896/saci.v6i4.379

Published 2018-12-23

  • Elena Luludova

Elena Luludova
Almaty Branch of Saint-Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract

New Year and Christmas are widely represented in the world literature. This is both a special genre – a touching Christmas story, which is created according to certain canons, and traditional "scary stories", the action of which is timed to the "magic" period of Christmas, and a description of the merry winter holidays in Soviet children’s literature, where the New year replaced the rejected Christmas. But not only the storytellers and romantics have left a description of the holidays they loved since childhood on the pages of their literary works. Poets, satirists, and realists had a hand here — quite a wide range of authors who described both the New Year holiday itself and everything that happens on Christmas. The ceremonies that took place during these holidays have a deep meaning. Therefore, the main purpose of the work is a comparative analysis of the descriptions of the Nativity and the Nativity in the works of Russian writers of the XVIII-XX centuries. The author analyses the works of Gogol, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Starygin, Zaitsev. It has been established that Russian literature actively turned to Christmas and Christmas holidays in the nineteenth century. For example, A.S. Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin" contrasted Christmas with Christmas. It has been established that Christian motifs dominate heathenism in Gogol’s Christmas tale. In the novel “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy was able to subtly determine the originality of the Christmas mood in the popular understanding. It has been determined that in classical works of Russian literature, Christmas time appears more often than Christmas: the pagan tradition is “one's own”, original, unlike Christian. The atmosphere is transmitted by writers more attractively than the Christmas one.

Keywords

Folk Tradition, Feminism, Novel, Christmastide Stories, Symbolism

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