“Literature as a guide for teaching the Law of God in gymnasiums”: an unwritten article by Priest Konstantin Aggeev

Abstract

The article considers the way of shaping literary perceptions of priest Konstantin Aggeev, a prominent figure of the church revival movement of the early twentieth century, apologist and participant of church-cultural dialogue. Coming from an illiterate peasant environment, he undergoes a challenging path of shaping his literary taste and becomes an independent thinking reader for whom Russian classics are one of the ways of forming his personal identity. Based on his reading experience, Fr. Konstantin suggests using images from Russian literature in teaching the Law of God in gymnasiums and theological schools. The ideas of the young teacher of law struggle to make their way, but in the process of substantiating these ideas, K. M. Aggeev formulates various arguments in support of appealing to the literary heritage — those of aesthetic, apologetic and moral nature. The article restores Aggeev’s reading experience, describes his attitude to such Russian writers as F. M. Do­sto­evsky, I. S. Tur­ge­nev, L. N. Tolstoy, etc. The field of research also includes literary critics and journals that may have influenced Aggeyev’s ideas about the nature of literary creativity. The article is a reconstruction of the unfulfilled idea of the article by K. M. Aggeev “Literature as a guide for teaching the Law of God in gymnasiums” (1897).

Keywords

• russian literature
• classics
• reading
• history of the russian church
• teaching the law of god
• catechesis