Russian Writers as Prototypes of Literary Characters. (Materials for a Dictionary of Prototypes in Russian Literature of the 19th — Early 20th Centuries)

Abstract

Among the works of Russian writers, a considerable share, when creating a character, to one degree or another, described a specific person (his appearance and/or habits, views, behavior, incidents from his life, etc.). However, the phenomenon of prototyping is rarely studied, and numerous works on specific prototypes are not generalized. One of the conditions of this work is the cataloging of prototypes. Similar work was started in the 1960s by M.S. Altman but did not find successors. The proposed index of prototypes of characters in literary works, which were Russian writers of the 19th – early 20th centuries, includes prototypes that Altman did not take into account in his publications. The index can serve for biographical research on the mentioned prototype writers, studying the poetics of specific authors who used prototypes and investigating general mechanisms of prototyping.

Keywords

• literary reference books
• scientific dictionaries
• prototype
• russian literature of the 19th – early 20th centuries
• writer as a literary character
• m.s. altman