Religious myth as the basis of the realism of Russian prose of the 1870s-1880s

Abstract

Modern searches by national cultures for ways to strengthen social order and their own identity bring into focus interest in the sacral, fixed in religion and addressed through the word of myth and literature to human existence. Therefore, the object of this research is the religious myth as the basis of the realism of Russian prose in the period of 1870s-1880s, which was transitive for Russia. The reliance on Christian mythologism in solving social problems was fully realized by the work of Nikolai Leskov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The purpose of the article is to conceptualize the correlation between the phenomena of sacral, religious myth and the realism of the prose of these authors as a basis for eliminating the opposition between social and artistic, asserting new principles of national identity. Analyzed: the Being of the sacred; the mythologizing of Russian literature; and the idea of myth as the embodiment of the sacral ideal, based upon which Russian prose writers formulated the idea of realistic literature – the nurturing of the best qualities of a person and society. What is new in the research is the consideration of the religious myth as a factor in the formation of the socially transforming role of Russian realistic prose. The research methodology includes philosophical, historical, hermeneutic and cultural approaches. The provisions of the article allow for expanding the scope of the study of the connection between myth, religions, national literature and cultures.

Keywords

• Dostoevsky
• Leskov
• literature
• mythologism
• realism
• Saltykov‑Shchedrin