Genre modifi cations and “search for a genre” in Timur Kibirov’s novel The General and His Family

Abstract

Genre defi nition of Timur Kibirov’s The General and His Family caused disagreement among literary critics. The range of opinions concerning the defi nition of the novel’s genre include historical novel, family saga, cento novel, the novel about psychology and morality of the late years of the USSR. This article is concentrated on the novel’s genre defi nition. The genre framework of the text is the epoch-standard local family story depicted against the background of massive Soviet history. Text analysis allows to speak about the combination of the family and historical chronicle genres as the form and meaning generating composition and style structure in its historical stability. At the same time, the novel is distinguished by features of genre marginality (transitivity), manifested through genre contamination and genre diff usion. This allows Kibirov’s novel to absorb other compositional and stylistic formations, including that variety of the coming-of-age novel, which Bakhtin defi nes as a novel of ordeal. Contamination of various genres in the novel is based on the principle of their interpenetration, that is, genre-related new formations and connections appear in the text as a result of the diff usion process, that is when new meaningful forms arise as a result of mixing, displacement, constant and deliberate breaking of boundaries. The author in the text, commenting on the events and being one of their participants, uses the techniques of artistic play to lead a never-ending dialogue with the reader and the characters. The author’s vision makes it possible to perceive the novel written in the paradigm of “genre search” in its genre integrity.

Keywords

• kibirov
• historical novel
• family chronicles
• marginalization
• contamination
• diff usion of genres
• author