Theoretical Aspects of the Study of Autobiographical Prose in
Russian Literary Criticism
Nigora Yusupova
University of Tashkent for Applied Sciences, Gavhar Str. 1, Tashkent 100149, Uzbekistan
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10439299
Keywords:
Literary process, genre, autobiographical prose, social consciousness, Russian literature.
Abstract
:
The article examines the theoretical aspects of the study of autobiographical prose in Russian literary
criticism. The history of the formation and development of Russian autobiographical prose goes back several
centuries. Against the background of the widespread dissemination of notes, diaries, and biographies in the
public consciousness in the second half of the 19th century, Russian autobiographical prose flourished. The
question of the specifics of the narrator’s self-identification becomes important when studying
autobiographical texts. This is expressed in the coverage of the internal development of personality in the
work, in the evolution of the author’s consciousness, in the description of the eventful side of life, which turns
into facts of his biography.
INTRODUCTION
Among the subjects of the humanitarian cycle, a
special role belongs to literature, which forms the
sphere of human sensory knowledge of the world
around us. This aesthetic, truly human form of
cognition of objective reality, developed in
communication with any type of art, acquires a
universal character and extends to all spheres of
activity. In the current practice of teaching Russian
literature, general and special techniques for
activating the mental activity of students serve mainly
to assimilate historical and literary knowledge and
theoretical and literary concepts and, to a lesser
extent, to master the necessary skills for independent
work with text and the development of creative
imagination, which together constitute reading skills.
In modern literary criticism, the concept of
“autobiographicalism” still has no definite
boundaries. Some critics and literary scholars
understand this term as documentary literature, others
as confessional, but both agree on one opinion - that
biographical literature is based on facts from the
writer’s personal life, which he needs to build a plot
and reveal the characters’ characters. In this sense,
Yuri
Polyakov’s
prose
is
undoubtedly
autobiographical, i.e. it contains both documentary
and confessional content at the same time, regardless
of whether, for example, his future biographers
establish or do not establish any parallels between the
image of the author-narrator from the novel “Little
Goat” in milk" and the face of a real writer. It cannot
be said unequivocally that the concept of “literary
autobiography” covers only the personal sphere of the
writer’s life, without entering the space of national
life. But there is no doubt that such works of Yu.
Polyakov as the family saga-trilogy “I Planned an
Escape”, “The Mushroom King”, the novel “Little
Goat in Milk”, the story “Apothegeus”, carry
unconditional signs of autobiographical prose, the
“value center” of which, according to M. Bakhtin’s
definition, consists of “social and, above all, family
values... organizing a private form of life” [3]. From
this point of view, Yu. Polyakov is one of the
brightest contemporary writers who continue the
Bunin tradition.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Despite
a
number
of
scientific
and
methodological studies conducted in recent years:
T.G. Braje, G.I. Belenky, V.G. Marantsman, M.V.
Cherkezova, L.B. Todorov, S.K. Biryukova, M.M.
Savchenko, N.N. Verbovaya, N.S. Rusina, I.S.
Zbarsky and others, the problem of analyzing a work
of art continues to be one of the most difficult and far
from resolved. Many researchers emphasize the need
to find new ways and methods of studying a literary
work that would be more consistent with its
specificity, its aesthetic essence.
It should be noted that the issue of developing
reading skills in students during the literary analysis
of autobiographical works remains insufficiently
resolved in methodological science, which forced us
to turn to the study of this problem.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Teachers experience difficulties in resolving the
following issues: organizing preparation for the
perception of the autobiographical work being
studied; a technique for improving reading skills,
mastering content, commenting on text, analyzing
events, the image of the main character and the image
of the narrator. Problems of methods for presenting
images-characters, ideas, themes, genre features and
the implementation of vocabulary and phraseological
work in literature lessons also remain difficult in
teaching practice. The choice and correct use of visual
aids that are effective when considering works of this
genre are also of great importance.
The object of our research is the process of
studying autobiographical works in their genre
specificity, the subject of the study is the analysis of
approaches to the study of autobiographical stories
and the determination of the most effective ways to
implement the task.
The purpose of the study is to theoretically
substantiate
the
methodology
for
studying
autobiographical stories, which will ensure the full
assimilation of works of this genre in the course of
Russian literature.
In accordance with the purpose of the study and
the working hypothesis, it was necessary to solve a
number of specific problems:
• identify the role of autobiographical stories in
the development of students based on the study and
analysis of psychological, pedagogical, literary
works, various types of programs, textbooks and
teaching aids on Russian literature;
• determine the psychological and pedagogical
essence of the process of developing students' reading
skills, taking into account the specifics of the genre.
The practical significance of the study lies in the
fact that it offers an analysis of various approaches
to the study of autobiographical works, which can be
used in the methodology of teaching literature.
Autobiographical prose is a description by the
author of his own life. Autobiography remains the
most important source of information about the life
and work of a writer, since in it he often evaluates his
works, narrates the real events underlying them, and
reveals
his
creative
ideas.
The
value
of
autobiographical prose lies primarily in the
documentary accuracy of the events described, in the
transmission of details, details, and the spirit of the
era. Many works of fiction are permeated with
autobiography, and the author’s personality (inner
world and behavioural characteristics) is, as a rule, a
prototype in them main character [3].
The theory of literature has been studied in
Russian educational institutions since the middle of
the 17th century. Over four centuries, the question of
raising the level of teaching literature and the role and
place of theoretical knowledge in literary education
has been raised more than once. Over the past
decades, the process of forming theoretical and
literary concepts in literature lessons has continued to
be the focus of attention of psychologists, teachers,
and methodologists. Scientists have achieved some
success in constructing a general methodology for the
formation of literary concepts and solving specific
methodological problems.
However, in work programs, a very modest place
is given to the study of genre features of
autobiographical
prose.
Meanwhile,
literary
scholarship has a large number of studies devoted to
the study of both the theory of genre in general and
the genre uniqueness of autobiographical prose in
particular. The problem is that the achievements of
literary theory in this area have not yet found
application in the practice of teaching literature.
In Western European literature, the genre of
autobiographical prose has been widely developed
since the Renaissance. In Russian literature, the
founder of this genre should be recognized as “The
Life of Archpriest Avvakum”, which is distinguished
by its high artistic merits. The first autobiographical
works were based on the genre canon of hagiography;
their structure accordingly remained “hagiographic.”
Autobiography itself was born in the 18th century in
business prose, when the “Notes” of Catherine II,
E.R. Dashkova, G.R. Derzhavina, D.I. Fonvizina. The
pinnacle of the autobiographical genre is the book by
A.I. Herzen's "Past and Thoughts", containing a
detailed account of his life and literary activities.
Next, the autobiography is transformed into chronicle
notes and only then transformed into a text in which
not only the past is significant, but also the story
itself, which presupposes a concrete or abstract
reader/listener. Appeals, maxims, headings, and so on
appear in the text.
An important step in the transformation of the
prose genre was the appearance in autobiographical
texts of two subject-speech spheres: “The correlation
between the plan of the “mature” narrator in the
present and the plan of his “I” in the past leads to the
stratification of a single describing subject into
subject 1 and subject 2” . This process occurs at the
end of the 18th – beginning of the XIX centuries. At
the same time, it should be noted the general genre-
forming features of the author’s image in an
autobiography: awareness of the described facts,
events and manifestations of not only external, but
also internal life; maximum interest in what is being
depicted; subjectivity, a kind of “rightness”
associated with declaring the justice of one’s
assessments and judgments .
The traditions of the autobiographical genre were
continued in Russian literature of the 20th century.
Among the most remarkable works of this kind
should be named M. Gorky’s trilogy: “Childhood”,
“In People”, “My Universities”; “The History of My
Contemporary” V.G. Korolenko; “My wanderings”
V.A. Gilyarovsky; “Before Sunrise” by M.M.
Zoshchenko; “Other Shores” by V.V. Nabokov;
“People, Years, Life” by I.G. Erenburg; “Evening
Day” by V.A. Kaverina; “A calf butted with an oak
tree” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn; “Diary” by Yu.M.
Nagibina.
Autobiography presupposes an emphasis on
reliability, truthfulness of the message about the main
facts and events of the author’s life. This information
is intended for the addressee; its volume and character
are associated with the author's intentions. The main
communicative purpose of an autobiography is to
preserve information about one’s life and make it an
element of the “collective memory” of readers. We
can say that in autobiographical works two-time plans
are gradually differentiated: the plan of the present
narrator (the time of creation of the text) and the plan
of his past (the time of the author’s real experience of
the events described) .
Turning to autobiographical works as a reliable
source of historical information can be justified by the
fact that the autobiography “resurrects” the world of
bygone things, forgotten words, lost ideas and
disappeared phenomena in emotionally filled and
artistically expressive images. Communicating with
an autobiographical text, the reader becomes familiar
with different aspects of language
and culture: with the history of life, costume, with
phraseology and vocabulary of a bygone time, with
its very “spirit”. “Historical time in autobiographical
texts,” writes N.A. Nikolina, – acquires such
figurative features as colour and sound (noise)....” . In
this regard, the artistic method of the auto biographer
can be characterized by the term “pettiness”. By
pettiness in this context, he understood everything
momentary, that which is closely connected with the
fleeting moment, the private, a certain everyday series
of momentary manifestations of the private life of an
ordinary person. For Tolstoy, pettiness turns out to be
“a form of psychological analysis - penetration into
the inside” . Such attention to fleeting and irreversible
time is fundamentally important for autobiography,
which distinguishes it from other epic genres. If the
epic author observes the course of life “from the
shore,” then the narrator in an autobiographical work
is “at the centre of the whirlpool”.
Researchers
of
the
genre
specificity
of
autobiographical texts: M. Wagner-Egelhaft, N.A.
Nikolina, G.I. Romanova, A.B. Romanyuk note a
variety of modifications of autobiography, consisting
in a greater or lesser degree of documentation, in
focusing on the history of one’s life or on memories
of other people, in the degree of artistry of the form.
The common feature that determines the inclusion of
such different texts in one genre system is the
“autobiographical agreement” by F. Lejeune, i.e.
“declaration of autobiographical intention”, recorded
in the name of the genre, in the preface, inserted
explanations and comments, as well as confirmed in
the articles and notes of the author, his interview with
an explanation of the author’s intentions, etc. F.
Lejeune gives the most precise definition of
autobiography as a genre: “An autobiography is a
narrative text with a retrospective setting, through
which a real person talks about his own existence, and
places emphasis on his personal life, especially the
history of the formation of his personality” .
Researchers note that autobiographical works
represent an “addressed genre form”, while at the
same time, addressing is combined in this genre with
elements of auto communication. An essential feature
of the addressee, which characterizes this genre
model as a whole, is his distance from the narrator in
time, which can be specifically emphasized in the
text. Autobiography as a genre involves addressing
both a specific addressee and abstract readers . The
current state of the autobiographical genre in Russian
literature is characterized by several main trends. In
the 20th century, in Russian autobiographical prose,
the process of inter-genre interaction deepens: the
range of genre models of memories expands. As a
result, non-traditional compositional forms arise,
“which are characterized by the absence of a rigid
sequence of events; the associativity and nonlinearity
of memories is emphasized in this case by the genre
model itself. At the same time, the role of montage of
texts, which in interaction form an analogue of
autobiography,
is
increasing.
Modern
autobiographical prose is increasingly turning to the
possibilities of hypertext” .
Autobiography creates opportunities for different
types and levels of self-reflection. In the XX century,
traditional autobiographical texts conveying real facts
are supplemented with “quasi-memoirs”; open
subjectivity and in-depth self-analysis lead to the
emergence of a special genre - parody or stylized
autobiography; a special type of language game
begins to be used - playing with imaginary situations
of the past, invented memories; autobiographies
appear, arising from recordings of oral histories. Each
of the identified compositional forms requires a
detailed and detailed description and study. In
addition, in modern literary criticism the features of
the narrative structure of an autobiographical story,
autobiographical story, and the like have not been
studied; the originality of various thematic forms of
autobiographical works (memoirs of scientists,
artists, peasants, repressed citizens and other social
groups) has not been revealed.
CONCLUSIONS
Thus, the analysis of literary interpretations of the
genre of autobiographical prose allows us to draw the
following conclusions:
• autobiographical prose acts as a system of
conventions that motivates reader perception, appeals
to the student’s common sense and life experience,
activates his memory and imagination, which leads to
a deepening of the understanding of the text and an
increase in the level of reading qualifications;
• autobiography in a broad sense is considered as
a kind of “micro-model of culture”, reflecting the past
time and the author’s path to himself in emotionally
filled and artistically expressive images.
To
summarize,
we
note
that
literary
autobiography is a complex socio-cultural and artistic
phenomenon that reflects the life of an entire people:
one or another social stratum over a certain period of
time (historical or cultural era, refracted from the
perspective of the personal and artistic perception of
reality by the writer - the main hero.
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[3]
Bakhtin, M. M. (1979) Aesthetics of verbal creativity.
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