From the world picture to the world image: the history of the imagological text formation in Russian literary culture

The originality of an imagological text of national literary culture is inseparably connected with the concepts of "world picture" and "world image". Their evolution and interaction are defined mainly by the peculiarity of imagology as a science. For Russian literature, this process is stipulated by the change in the paradigm of social and philosophical development at the turn of the 19th century. The birth of new romantic historiography and idealistic philosophy in Europe determined significant progress in aesthetic consciousness of Russian culture. The era of "civil exaltation" in the 1810-1820s activated the interest in the problems of national consciousness and historical development of Russia. The scope of books Russian intelligentsia were reading broadened with the works of the representatives of sensualism (Ch. Bonnet, E. Condillac, D. Hume), pre-romanticist natural philosophy (G.L. Buffon, A. Humboldt), descriptive poetry ("The gardens, a poem" by Jacques Delille), the works by French historiographers and German philosophers. The concept of "world picture" was methodologically recognized as the main principle of world simulation. A picture as the phenomenon of a visual range (a piece of painting) became an important element of the word art. The thematic motives so significant for the romantic art originate from a resurgent portrait, a symbolic picture, an artist image and an ekphrasis phenomenon. The transfer of a picture to the word form promoted the formation of a special style of the literary world picture. This new style was developing in the atmosphere of national history comprehension. Karamzin's search in historiography gave birth to the original repertory of "historical pictures". The interest to the local color and local text promoted the synthesis of historical content and national character in the world pictures. Young Gogol's search (the idyll in pictures "Hans Kuchengarten"), the discoveries of Russian poets in panoramic or historical elegy ("Slavic Girl" by Zhukovsky, "Dying Tasso" by Batyushkov, "The Memories in Tsarskoye Selo" by Pushkin, and "The Thoughts" by Ryleyev), poetics of drama scenes and "live pictures" in Pushkin's and Gogol's drama promoted the anthropologization of world pictures. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" became a representation of the process. Russian literary culture made a step-by-step transition from the world pictures to the world image formation.

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