INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY OF WOMEN'S MEMOIR TEXTS XVIII - EARLY XIX
§ 1. WOMEN'S DISCOURSE: A HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION
§ 2. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE DISCOURSE ABOUT FEMALE
§ 3. TRADITIONAL FORMS OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE PERSON IN RUSSIAN
CULTURE OF THE PRE-PETROVSK TIME
§ 4. MAN IN THE PETROVSK EPOCH
§5. LIFE, AUTOLIFE AND MEMOIR TRADITION
CHAPTER II
N. B. DOLGORUKOI
§ I. HISTORY OF PERCEPTION AND INTERPRETATION OF THE "HANDWRITTEN NOTES"
N. B. DOLGORUKOI
§2. THE SPECIFICITY OF TEXT FORMATION AND ITS SEMANTICS IN
N. B. DOLGORUKOY
CHAPTER III THE WAY OF THE “TRUE CHRISTIAN WOMAN” IN THE WORLD OF EARTHLY PASSIONS IN
MEMORIES" by A. E. LABZINA
§ 1. HAGIOGRAPHIC TRADITION IN "MEMORIES"
A.E. LABZINA
§2. MASONIC RELIGIOUS MYSTICITY AND "MEMORY"
A.E. LABZINA
CHAPTER IV UNIVERSAL FEMALE PERSONALITY IN THE "NOTES"
E. R. DASHKOVA
§one. DISCOURSIVE POTENTIALS OF ^-NARRATORY IN THE "NOTES"
E.R. DASHKOVA
§2. BUILDING, CREATION, CULTIVATION: RELIGIOUS
THE PHILOSOPHICAL UTOPIA OF E. R. DASHKOVA
CHAPTER V THE WOMAN HEROINE AND RUSSIAN HISTORY IN THE "NOTES"
CATHERINE II
§ 1. "NOTES" OF CATHERINE II AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE
§ 2. "NOTES" OF CATHERINE II AS A TEXT OF CULTURE
§ 3. CREATION OF THE TEXT AND "CREATION OF HISTORY" IN THE "NOTES"
CATHERINE II
Recommended list of dissertations
Genesis and genre dynamics of philosophical and artistic forms in Russian prose of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. 2012, doctor of philological sciences Kopteva, Eleonora Ivanovna
The tradition of Russian hagiography in memoirs of the 18th century 2004, candidate of philological sciences Muravyova, Vera Vladimirovna
The process of borrowing and its streamlining in the second half of the 18th century 2001, candidate of philological sciences Geranina, Irina Nikolaevna
The Art of Verbal Portraiture in Russian Memoirs and Autobiographical Literature of the Second Half of the 18th - First Third of the 19th Centuries. 2011, candidate of philological sciences Rudneva, Inna Sergeevna
Cultural myths and utopias in the memoir-epistolary literature of the Russian Enlightenment 2010, Doctor of Philology Prikazchikova, Elena Evgenievna
Introduction to the thesis (part of the abstract) on the topic "The Phenomenon of Women's Autobiographical Literature in Russian Culture in the Second Half of the 18th - Early 19th Centuries"
At the end of the 20th century in humanities ah, there has been a tendency towards intensive study of peripheral and marginal historical and literary phenomena. Such phenomena in the former scientific tradition were little studied, since they were generated on the border of literature and non-literary forms of speech activity - everyday life, which, according to Tynyanov's definition, "is teeming with the rudiments of various intellectual activities" [Tynyanov 1993: 130]. An example can be research in the field of modern urban, children's folklore, "naive", "provincial" and popular literature by A. S. Arkhipova, V. V. Baranova, S. B. Borisov, O. Vainshtein, A. P. Minaeva, I. JI. Savkina, I. V. Utekhin and other scientists.
One of the most interesting "marginal" cultural phenomena, which for a long time did not attract genuine scientific interest, is women's writing and especially "women's" discourse about women. It is in this case not just about the work of women writers, but about such texts in which the plot situation of the auto-presentation of a female personality is modeled in the form of a narrative (autobiographical notes, diaries, memoirs). Russian women's autobiographies have so far been little and incompletely studied, they are practically unknown to a wide circle of readers, but meanwhile they could become a real "discovery" in the knowledge of the history of the Russian personality, Russian culture and literature. However, any intention to such knowledge (both scientific and reader) faces a number of difficulties and problems. If the reader can only complain about the paucity of publications of women's memoirs (first of all, texts of ancient times), then the researcher of the Russian cultural and literary tradition finds himself in a strange situation of "absence in the presence." Today, science shows both interest in memoirs and tendencies towards their study and interpretation, but for all this, a system of generally recognized and generally significant research paradigms and strategies in understanding and describing this cultural phenomenon has not yet been formed.
Underestimation of memoirs in literary science, - according to E. JT. Shklyaeva, - is largely due to the complex, ambiguous attitude of various artists towards them (A. S. Pushkin, JI. N. Tolstoy, A. Akhmatova, etc.). Another tradition comes from V. G. Belinsky, who valued authenticity in memoir literature, and therefore considered it “the last facet in the field of the novel” [Shklyaeva 2002: 3]. To date, researchers of the memoir genre (the theory of which is still at the stage of formation and discussion) have managed to determine only a few parameters, in accordance with which the genre is distinguished from other literary forms and its internal differentiation. This is, first of all, the chronological "point" of the formation of the memoir text and its structure-forming core, that is, the described historical event and the personality of the author. However, in the approach to interpreting a specific memoir text, these, as it is considered, basic and fundamental, criteria are clearly not enough. After all, any "-" notes, autobiographies, memoirs are primarily narrative written texts, one way or another connected with the laws of narration, with the discursive strategies of culture and the mechanisms of text formation existing in it.
However, modern theoretical concepts related to the definition of the specifics of narrative texts and the function of discursive practices, have not yet found their application in the analysis of autobiographical narration. Apparently, memoir prose, which is considered strictly documentary and “applied”, does not seem to modern researchers to be material adequate to text theories. But it is precisely in connection with them that the most serious problem in understanding memoirs is revealed, which is even a kind of theoretical and methodological incident. This is still not formed, despite the narrative nature of autobiographical texts, an attitude towards two discursive levels characteristic of any narrative: referential and communicative (see: Samorukova 2002, Tyupa 2002, Genette 1980, Lejeime 200J). Most often, only the reference level is seen in memoirs, that is, a story about the history of life or about some real incidents. Attention to this level is so great that, in fact, the content of the texts is exhausted by it, and the texts themselves acquire the character of a “document”. At the same time, the organization of a story about a story or stories, structured by I-narration, that is, the actual communicative event of the narrative (discourse about a story, incident, etc.), remains out of sight when interpreting the memoir text. As some researchers of the genre rightly point out, memoirs “became a pantry for the historian, who from time to time took from there either a fact, or the features of everyday life, or some kind of judgment, but they themselves did not become the subject of research” [Chaikovskaya 1980: 209]. And various scientific and philological schools, "not paying attention to memoirs as an independent genre<.>considered them as historical, cultural and other sources” [Shklyaeva 2002: 3].
Indeed, studies of autobiographical texts (for example, K. I. Chukovsky’s classic works on “Memoirs” by A. Panaeva-Golovacheva), numerous introductory articles preceding the publication of memoirs, differ precisely in that they consider them as an exclusively documentary and historical source of information about reliable and specific biographical and historical facts. The concepts of “literary life” and “literary fact” introduced by Russian formalists into scientific use only partly changed the general state of the problem. ■ Indicative in this regard is the attitude of researchers to the "Notes" by E. R. Dashkova. For example, M. M. Safonov believes that this text is “the most important source of biographical information” about the author and contains “valuable material in order to get an idea of her personality, to draw a psychological portrait” [Safonov 1996: 14]. Indeed, Dashkova's Notes, to which a number of works are devoted, are considered only in this perspective, as evidenced, for example, by the solid scientific collection Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. Research and materials” (St. Petersburg, 1996).
A similar attitude to the memoirs of various eras is expressed by other philologists and historians: a commonplace of modern humanities has become a story about a particular person, about certain events only on the basis of materials contained in memoirs or diaries. These are, for example, information and facts of the biography of A. S. Pushkin, M. I. Glinka and their contemporaries, gleaned from A. P. Kern’s “Memoirs” and become well known. They are never questioned and are actively used in scientific papers and concepts. However, a careful analysis of the text allows you to see the presence of special moments in it. E. JI. Shklyaeva considered these "Memoirs" as a text subject to "secondary modeling" and showed how "literary models" influence the text even in descriptions of seemingly purely concrete and real facts. Kern, the researcher believes, “mythologizes those whom he remembers, translates from the real plan<.>into an artistic plan. For example, "the appearance of Glinka is recreated<.>by association with Pushkin's character from "Egyptian Nights", or at least under his impression" [Shklyaeva 2000: 143, 139]. The researcher also notes other literary motifs and images in Kern's "Memoirs", which, for the sake of literary plots, consciously or unconsciously even distorts the true events. So, the memoirist writes that Glinka was buried in the same church as Pushkin, and she cried in the same place. However, Glinka was buried at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and "they occupied 'the same place' only in the soul and memory of the memoirist", and not in reality [Shklyaeva 2000: 142-143]. Other authors also speak about the narrative complexity of the autobiographical genre in their studies. So, “an autobiography,” according to B. V. Dubin, “is the embodiment of the independence and conscious position of the individual, his civil, political, moral maturity, his aesthetic responsibility. This form is extremely complex, even sophisticated, which is why it appears in the history of culture so late, in fact, simultaneously with the crystallization of the full-fledged figure of the author in literary life” [Dubin 2000: 110].
Indeed, memoirs and diaries are texts arranged and built more complex than is commonly believed. From the point of view of Yu. N. Tynyanov, in one system they can be a fact of literature, and in another - an extra-literary phenomenon. The scientist, showing special attention to this kind of "documentary" texts in culture, emphasized, for example, "the great importance in the literary evolution of<.>epistolary literature of the 19th century", and its "static isolation", in his opinion, "does not at all open the way to the literary personality of the author and only implausibly slips the concept of psychological genesis instead of the concept of literary evolution and literary genesis" (Tynyanov 1993: 124-126). For Yu. N. Tynyanov, writing in the 1111st century is a phenomenon of a special kind: once “ former document“over time, it “becomes a literary fact” [Tynyanov 1993: 130-132]. Yu.N. Tynyanov's point of view is quite applicable to the characterization of another type of text - memoirs and autobiographies, functionally similar to the genre of writing.
The duality of the definition of the memoir genre and its boundaries was also seen by other representatives of the Russian formal school. For example, JL Ya. Ginzburg considered memoirs both as an unconditional fact of literature and as a phenomenon of what the formalists called "everyday life". In her works, one can find a rather conditional differentiation of memoir genres, which in the author's concept are called "intermediate prose":
Memoirs, autobiographies, confessions are almost always literature, suggesting readers in the future or present, a kind of plot construction of the image of reality and the image of a person; while letters or diaries consolidate an as yet undetermined process, a process of life with an as yet unknown outcome. Progressive dynamics is replaced by retrospective dynamics. Memoir genres thus approach the novel without being identified with it” [Ginzburg 197G. 12].
Trying to establish the typology of "intermediate prose", the researcher noted that "the typology of memoirs is diverse<.>. Sometimes only the thinnest line separates an autobiography from an autobiographical story or novel” [Ginzburg 197 G. 137]. For J1. Ya. Ginzburg in the study of memoirs, it is important to focus on authenticity and eventfulness, which should distinguish them from artistic autobiographical prose. Nevertheless, in her works, L. Ya. Ginzburg did not define the principles of such a difference.
More consistently and in detail the typology of memoirs in their connection with the genesis of the genre of "novel-memoirs" in Western European literature of the 17th - 18th centuries is studied by V. D. Altashina: . she notes the dominant influence of memoir literature of the 18th century on the creation of the novel as a genre and makes an attempt, following F. Lejeune and J. Genette, to consider precisely the artistic means used in memoirs and autobiographies, from chronicling to romanticizing reality [Altashina 2007].
However, with regard to Russian memoirs, as M. Ya. Bilinkis writes, who devoted a separate study to memoir texts and documentary prose of the 18th century, it should be borne in mind that the definition of a text as memoir or autobiographical is usually associated with an intuitive perception of it as such (the main criteria here - I think , it seems to me) or with tradition. Hence, natural is the uncertainty in the definitions of Russian memoirs, which we find in various reference books, and the very vague conclusion that memoir literature is ""a phenomenon that is historically developing, the origins of which are very far away"" [Bilinkis 1995: 11].
It seems that the problem in this case is not to finally find clear definitions, boundaries, or specific features of memoir prose1, but to define and formulate new principles and approaches to understanding its discursive and narrative nature. Modern humanitarian knowledge and the new theoretical concepts that have appeared in it for understanding the phenomenon of "speech behavior" in culture make it possible to determine such principles. As I. P. Smirnov notes, today “narratology is passionate about comprehending the logic of actions that is equally relevant for an aesthetically marked narrative, and for social behavior, and for describing historical events” [Smirnov 2001: 226]. If narratology is engaged in comprehending the logic of communicative actions, then those categories and concepts that researchers of memoirs are so persistently looking for today turn out to be, in fact, optional for comprehending such logic and for understanding the semantics of the text: the genre of memoirs or autobiographical novel is absolutely not enough to understand the semantics of the text: strict genre definitions are not only optional, but also do not provide any tools or "key" to an adequate reading and interpretation of the text. In this case, other grounds for approaching the analysis of an autobiographical text, based on the idea formulated by M. M. Bakhtin about “speech genres” or “speech practices” of culture, turn out to be more productive. From this point of view, a certain genre is also a certain type or form of “verbal communication” of a specific cultural and historical situation or era, that is, one of the forms of a system, discursive practices in the general communicative space of culture. No wonder A. Ya. Gurevich, considering the monograph of the historian N. Z. Davis
1 A similar “solution” to the problem is proposed in a number of modern studies devoted to autobiographies in the broadest sense, see, for example, in: Bronskaya 2001; Mikheev 2006, Savina 2002.
Women on the Margins. Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (1996), devoted to three 17th-century women's autobiographies, defines that particular method of "cultural anthropology" according to which "Fiction and History are decisively separated, and in no way mixed. Such is the method followed by Davis, and to what<.>any historian should follow” [Gurevich 2005: 627].
Memoir texts, therefore, should be considered as texts generated by the general communicative strategies of culture, that is, as types of speech activity and a type of speech practice. With this approach, the problem of constructing this statement as a separate manifestation of the speech-thinking activity of a person of a given era comes to the fore. Consequently, the most important and, indeed, fundamental direction in the study of memoirs turns out to be not what they tell about, but how they tell about it, how the personality of the narrator manifests himself in the way of telling, due to his own, era, and certain mental attitudes, and the nature of his "speech activity"3. This person is not only a writer, but also a "linguistic" (in the terminology of Yu. terminology of V. V. Kolesov).
But even on this path, a researcher of women's memoirs encounters a number of serious obstacles. We are talking about today's popular "gender approach" to the study and interpretation of literary works. Proponents of a "gender" view of the history of literature tend to single out women's discourse and discourse about women's in a separate and
2 Compare, for example, with a similar statement by B. V. Dubin that biography and dashes - autobiography in the 15th-11th century - "as a synonym for the initial fullness of self-realization, ultimately becomes a micromodel of culture, understood in the spirit of the Kantian Enlightenment" [Dubin 2001: 104].
3 It should be noted that partly the solution to the problem of describing autobiography as a speech genre (from the standpoint of communicatology and narratology) is presented in study guide Nikolina II. L. "Poetics of Russian autobiographical prose" [Nzholina 2002]. For more details about the problems of studying autobiographical literature in modern literary criticism, see: [Grechaia 2003]. a specific area that is different from the general historical and literary process (see, for example, Savkina 2007; Rosenholm 1995: 151). In the works of researchers actively involved in women's discourse, a special gender approach to texts has taken shape with its own methodological principles, which are often opposed to traditional literary criticism. Such a specification seems somewhat far-fetched, since the development of culture and its speech practices is subject to the general mechanisms of word creation. Women's writing in this case is one of the naturally conditioned types of the general speech flow of culture. Of course it has its features and characteristics, but it is precisely these differences that raise questions for an interested researcher about how women's texts participated in the historical and literary process, what they brought into it, what they contributed to, what they abandoned. And, since women expressed themselves in a narrative word, it is impossible and unnecessary to ignore the method of auto-presentation proposed by the authors themselves - a literary text, in any approach to the study of the phenomenon of the feminine. l.-a.
There is another problem that is relevant specifically for the researcher of texts of the 18th century. This is the absence of a universally recognized conceptualization of the specifics of the existence of a text in Russian culture in the second half of the 18th century. The complexity of solving this problem lies in the fact that so far there are very few generalizing works on the Russian 18th century, although authoritative specialists have repeatedly spoken about the specifics of this cultural era, its versatility and the relevance of further in-depth and comprehensive scientific research (Yu. M. Lotman, B. (A. Uspensky, V. N. Toporov, V: M. Zhivov, A. Jl. Zorin, O. M. Goncharova, et al.). In addition, Russian literary criticism as a whole is characterized by “neglect” of prose and memoirs of the 18th century. As M. Ya. Bilinkis notes, it is easy to see that in studies of Russian literature of the 18th century, prose works have traditionally been and are given a secondary place.
Most often, separate articles or narrowly specialized dissertation essays are devoted to them. Modern monographs, whose protagonist is the prose of the first half of the 18th century, are published mainly outside of Russia. However, even in them, prose genres emerge as a kind of exoticism commenting on the processes on the "main line" - in Russian poetry of this period" [Bniainkis 1995: 3]."
Indeed, Russian prose of the 18th century, despite "the presence of a number of interesting works(Yu. M. Lotman, V. N. Toporova, T. E. Avtukhovich, M. Ya. Bilinkis, M. V. Ivanov, F. Z. Kanunova, N. D. Kochetkova, G. N. Moiseeva, E A. Surkov,), has not yet been studied to the extent that could provide a reliable and complete description of its general characteristics, features and development paths. The reason for this is primarily those historical and literary schemes through which it is customary to consider the literature of the 18th century as a whole. Authoritative scientists have repeatedly spoken about the dogmatic nature of such schemes, about their inconsistency with the real state of affairs, but modern ideas about the Russian 18th century also determine exceptional interest and attachment to the “main” lines of literature. However, these “main” lines, already thoroughly described more than once, connected mainly with the development of poetry (classicism - sentimentalism - pre-romanticism), practically do not affect such text streams of Russian culture of the second half of the 18th century as memoirs and autobiographical notes, despite the fact that that "the 18th century appears to be the period of affirmation of the memoir genre" [Khrenov, Sokolov 2001:329].
Modern science is especially inattentive to women's memoirs of this era. It is significant that even in a special study by M. Ya. Bilinkis we are talking only about men's memoirs, which turn out to be remarkable precisely because their authors actively participated in state activity or were officers of the Russian army, and therefore left many interesting testimonies about their time. Next to such texts and in the vicinity of the peak phenomena of Russian literature of the 18th century, women's writing seems to be an optional, spontaneous and isolated phenomenon.
Thus, we can say that the scientific tradition that studies specific women's creativity and texts created by women authors of the 18th century is still in its infancy in Russia. Relevant for modern science and the search for sound theoretical and methodological strategies for studying women's memoirs. The existing system of approaches to the analysis and interpretation of memoirs as a whole made it possible to create a number of historical and literary descriptions and classifications that expanded our understanding of the textual specifics of Russian culture and literature. But it is impossible not to see that these descriptions, having exhausted the possibilities provided to the researcher by the already mastered analytical methods, do not allow literary thought to develop further. It is obvious that now it is necessary to go not only to the further systematization of memoir prose, to the search for new sources and the discovery of new texts, but, above all, to an in-depth understanding of the originality of the autobiographical narrative, its essence as a special cultural phenomenon that has and embodies its own discursive tasks. This is especially true of women's memoirs and texts of distant eras, for example, Russian XVIII century.
The problem in this case also lies in the fact that the generally accepted rating system, in fact, does not take into account a number of significant and significant factors in approaches to memoirs, such as, for example, the specifics of cultural and historical reality. After all, each cultural era is indicative of its own clear and strict system of “coordinates”, which models in the minds of contemporaries the semantics of that categorical matrix through which some type of text is perceived, understood and, most importantly, created. Each cultural epoch dictates its own rules for evaluating a person's personality, which becomes the main subject of the author's reflection in the self-narration. Therefore, in the study of memoir texts of the 18th century, one of the most significant methodological guidelines should be special attention to the cultural and historical-literary context of this era, to the specifics of the common discursive space and communicative strategies of the culture of this time. Another important characteristic of the proposed research strategies is the approach to the memoir text as a narrative text, which suggests the need and possibility of analyzing memoirs as an organized and structured narrative not only in terms of genre form, but also the semantics of the work. Thus, according to the leading researcher of the autobiographical genre, F. Lejeune, “the autobiographical genre has its own rules of structuring” [Lejeune 2000]. In this regard, the figure of the I-narrator deserves special attention, since it is in the autobiographical narrative that this subject of speech is of particular importance for the interpretation of the entire work as a whole: 1<
This perhaps authorizes us to organize, or at any rate to formulate, the problems of analyzing narrative discourse according to categories borrowed from the grammar of verbs, categories that I will reduce here to three basic classes of verb determinations: those dealing with temporal relations between narrative and story, which I will arrange under the heading of "tense"; those dealing with modalities (forms and degrees) of narrative "representation", and thus with the "mood" of the narrative; and finally, those dealing with the way in which the narrating itself is implicated in the narrative, narrating in the sense in which I have defined it, that is, the narrative situation or its instance, and along with that its two protagonists: the narrator and his audience, real or implied . voice"4 .
Which probably leads us to classify, or at any rate formulate, the problems of analysis of narrative discourse according to categories borrowed from the grammar of verb forms, categories that I will reduce here to the three main morphological adjectives of verbs: those that have to do with the temporal relationships between narra !willow and history, I will call "temporary"; that they are dealing with the modality (form and degree) of narrative "representation", and therefore have a bearing on the "modality" of narrative; and, finally, those by which the narrative itself is implied in the narrative, that is, what I define as the situation of the narrative, the narrative itself, connecting two components: the author and the audience, the real and the imagined, . "pledge" ”(hereinafter my translation is O. M).
The main attention of the researcher should be focused in this case not on the real-historical author of the notes or memoirs; but on the figurative-speech organization of the text, behind which stands the figure of "speaking" or "narrative".
Ikw ^ "The experience of modern humanities, thus, defines new opportunities and research strategies in the study of autobiographical texts, especially women's texts of the 18th century, which have not yet attracted close attention. The need for such a study, strongly felt today, determines the relevance of the dissertation work Its main goal is to study women's memoirs of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries as a cultural phenomenon generated by its time and determined by the originality of its discursive practices and text-forming mechanisms. - the beginning of the XIX century.This also determines the main tasks of the dissertation research:
1. to determine the theoretical and methodological foundations and analytical j-bi-strategies for studying the text of a woman's autobiography of the second half
XVIII - early XIX century;
2. identify a system of cultural, historical and literary factors that influenced the interpretation of the category of the feminine, and the main
U^ - mechanisms of text formation that formed women's memoir writing;
3. to analyze the specific texts most representative of the memoir prose of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries and to characterize the specifics of their narrative structure and figurative-speech organization;
4. determine the semantic parameters of the autobiographical female text.
The main material for the study is the autobiographical texts of N. B. Dolgoruky (“Willed Notes”), A. E. Labzina (“Memoirs of a Noble Woman”), E. R. Dashkova (“Notes”), Empress Catherine II (“Notes ”), as well as works of Russian and European literature of the 18th - 19th centuries, forming a historical and literary context. The choice of the main material for the study is due to the fact that, firstly, these four texts combine both time and autobiographical orientation, but, secondly, they are different in their textual semantics and purpose, written by women of different social status and fame, which allows you to get an idea about the memoirs of women's prose of the era and its main trends in general. Consideration of these materials in their systemic unity with the involvement of theoretically and logically sound approaches to text analysis provides the greatest reliability: the results of a dissertation research.
The general theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the historical-literary and typological approaches to the study artwork in combination with modern methods of analysis presented in narratology and communicative approach. The concepts of M. M. Bakhtin, A. Ya. Gurevich, Yu. M. Lotman, V. M. Zhivov, V. N. Toporov, A. L. Zorin, O. M. Goncharova , V. Proskurina, I. P. Smirnova, Yu. N. Tynyanov, V. I. Tyupa, B. A. Uspensky, I. V. Samorukova, Yu. areas of humanitarian knowledge (history, communication; narratology, discourse theory, semiotics, philosophy, linguistics).
The main provisions of the dissertation submitted for defense:
1. In the 18th century, one of the phenomena of the new Russian culture and literature was formed - women's autobiographical discourse.
2. Women's memoirs of the second half of the 18th-early 19th centuries are part of the general discursive and textual space of culture, since they use basic communicative strategies and mechanisms characteristic of the Russian literary tradition.
3. Women's autobiographical texts are a complexly organized narrative model focused on the process of female self-realization and awareness of female identity that is relevant to Russian culture in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
4. Women's narrative text is based on the use of various speech practices and genre traditions (hagiographical canon, philosophical and historiosophical discourse of the Enlightenment, Masonic religious and mystical discourse, secular texts of the late 18th - early 19th centuries), which allows us to consider this phenomenon as naturally ■ included in historical and literary process1 of his time.
5. At the level of the figurative-speech organization of the female autobiographical text, two plans are distinguished that are essential for its understanding: the image of the L-heroine and the speech structure of the L-narrative. I, the heroine of female writing, is a model of self-identification, the speech side of the text is designed to interpret such a model as ideal.
6. Organized by common mechanisms of text generation, women's memoirs of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries have typologically similar features. The author's individuality and the specificity of the statement manifest themselves at the level of semantics: female ideality can appear in the texts of the era in the images of a hagiographic heroine, mystical femininity, a universal female personality or a woman in history.
The research goals and objectives set in relation to women's autobiographical discourse, which in their complex form have never been used as research strategies, determine the scientific novelty of the dissertation research. In the scientific tradition, it is customary to consider an autobiographical text as a genuine evidence of what is happening, a kind of historical document, a source of knowledge about the era in which it was written. Women's memoirs of the 16th century as specifically organized narrative texts, having their own special figurative-speech structure and semantics associated with the general cultural patterns of the era and the historical and literary context, have not yet been the subject of scientific literary research.
The theoretical significance of the dissertation research lies in the fact that new strategies in the study of autobiographical discourse were theoretically substantiated in it; used theoretical definitions that significantly change the approach to memoir literature* in general, and to women's autobiographical writing in particular; the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of women's autobiographical texts, the features of their poetics, semantics and narrative structure are characterized. At the same time, the dissertation research substantiates the need to recognize women's autobiography as an object of scientific historical and literary reflection associated with such a sphere of modern humanitarian knowledge as historical anthropology.
Scientific and practical significance of the dissertation. The results and materials of the study can be used for inclusion in the educational and methodological complex for the study of Russian literature and fiction of the 18th century, in the construction of courses in the history of literature, special courses, as well as in preparing for publication and commenting on the texts of women's memoirs of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries .
Approbation of work. The materials and results of the dissertation research in the form of reports were presented at scientific conferences and scientific and practical seminars: the international conference "Ideology and Rhetoric" (St. Petersburg, 2002); international conference "East-West" (Volgograd, 2004), IV interuniversity conference of young researchers "Gender relations in modern society: global and local” (St. Petersburg, 2004); International Conference “Codes of Russian Classics. Problems of detection, reading and updating” (Samara, 2005); V Interuniversity Conference of Young Researchers on Gender Issues “Gender Practices: Traditions and Innovations” (St. Petersburg, 2005); interuniversity conference dedicated to the 75th anniversary of prof. V. A. Zapadova, “Problems and Prospects for the Study of Russian Literature of the 18th Century” (St. Petersburg, 2005); International Conference "Spirituality in Russian Literature of the 18th Century" (IMLI RAS, Moscow, 2005); interuniversity conference "Herzen Readings" (St. Petersburg, 2005); scientific and theoretical seminar " Theoretical aspects everyday life” within the framework of the international conference “Everyday life as a text of culture” (Kirov, 2005); international seminar on family psychology (St. Petersburg, 2006), VIII international conference for young philologists (Tallinn, 2006); interuniversity conference "Herzen Readings" (St. Petersburg, 2007).
Similar theses majoring in Russian Literature, 10.01.01 VAK code
Memoirs as a "text of culture": Women's line in the memoirs of the XIX - XX centuries: A. P. Kern, T. A. Kuzminskaya, L. A. Avilova 2002, candidate of philological sciences Shklyaeva, Elena Leonidovna
Russian memoir-autobiographical literature of the 18th century: Genesis, genre-species diversity, poetics 2003, Doctor of Philology Antyukhov, Andrey Viktorovich
Gender Self-Reflection in Women's Autobiographical Prose of the 20th Century: Transitional Age as a Theme and Image; Lou Andreas-Salome, Marguerite Duras, Krista Wolf, Olga Voinovich 2003, candidate of philological sciences Kukes, Anna Alexandrovna
Artistic Narrative in Travel Prose of the Second Half of the 18th Century: Genesis and Forms 2012, candidate of philological sciences Mamurkina, Olga Viktorovna
"Family Chronicle" and "Childhood of Bagrov-grandson" S.T. Aksakov: forms of writing and traditions of the genre 2004, candidate of philological sciences Nikolaeva, Natalya Gennadievna
Dissertation conclusion on the topic "Russian literature", Mamaeva, Olga Vladimirovna
CONCLUSION
The Russian 18th century is the time of state reforms and cultural innovative transformations, which created not only “ new Russia”, but also a new Russian personality. Due to the specifics of the era, the active search for national identity contributes to the formation of the "personality" in its new status - "historical" and at the same time "anthropological" being, and generates new types of discourse necessary for the manifestation and implementation of the Russian personality. The formation of personal individuality is accompanied by the obligatory formation of new mechanisms that allow the individual to “say” about himself, verbalize himself, make himself the “subject” of reflection - put himself in the center new history and new time. One of these ways to express oneself has become autobiographical writing, a special “personal” form of expression that has evolved from a variety of discursive practices and codes. It is no coincidence that the 18th century became the heyday of the memoir genre.
At the same time, the uniqueness of the cultural situation of the era lies not only in the formation of individuality in the general anthroposophical sense. It was at this time, which dramatically changed the stereotypes of thinking and mental attitudes, that the comprehension of the category of the feminine in its relation to the masculine and to the entire semantic space of national culture and being as a whole was updated. At the same time, there arises the idea of a real female personality and the need for its discursive designation. Having received her status in culture, a woman also receives the possibility of self-identification: verbal self-realization and verbalization, the right to creativity, regardless of what step in the social hierarchy she occupies. A nun, a traveler, a president of the Academy of Sciences, a noble woman or an empress - all of them feel themselves to be a part of history, state and / or personal, they realize themselves as the subject and object of a narration, a “story” about themselves.
The main problem of the dicursive realization of the female personality and female identity, there was a problem of organizing the text of the I-narrative. And although this problem was significant for the entire Russian discourse of the 18th century, which gravitated towards innovative textual models, it was especially relevant for women's creativity, since Russian culture * had no experience of secular women's writing and autobiography. Russian memoirists of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries, in search of their own "text", are included in the general literary process, using the basic communicative strategies and mechanisms characteristic of this time as a whole.
Being part of the general textual space of culture, women's autobiographical texts are complexly organized narrative models designed to depict the female automodel and the very principles of automodelling. Such a narrative text is based on the use of various speech practices and genre traditions, which also allows us to consider women's memoirs as a natural and conditioned phenomenon of the Russian historical and literary process. Like other texts of the era, women's writing, of course, was associated with the national tradition of depicting an ideal personality or its self-realization. First of all, these are textual formations that are significant for the Russian consciousness, such as religious and educational works (lives and apocrypha, legends and chronicle legends), in which sometimes a woman could also be the object of the image. Philosophical and historiosophical discourse of the Enlightenment, Masonic religious and mystical discourse, and secular texts of the 18th century, which were popular in the new cultural paradigm, became another guideline for organizing an autobiographical female narrative. These textual models not only provided opportunities for the idealization of the feminine, but also included the female heroine in the space of modern culture.
That is why every female story about herself, told by different authors - Dolgoruky, Labzina, Dashkova and Catherine II - is a complex construct with a special internal structure. Organized by the general mechanisms of text generation, women's memoirs of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries have typologically similar features: the narrative structure includes the central image of the ^-heroine (the model of self-identification used in the text) and has a complex figurative and speech design - I - narration (expressed discursive model of self-identification). The author's individuality and the specificity of the statement manifest themselves at the level of semantics: female ideality can appear in the texts of the era in the images of a hagiographic heroine, mystical femininity, a universal female personality or a woman in history.
Each of the considered texts presents individual mechanisms of verbalization of the female personality, self-realization and self-sacralization. Despite the genre affiliation and typological similarities that unite them, due to the cultural and temporal context, each of the memoirists presents her own principles of semantization and interpretation of the female personality.
N. B. Dolgorukaya enters herself into the “male discourse”, appropriating the texts of traditional culture, which affects the ideal female image she created. Despite the real * belonging to the new secular culture, the outstanding female personality in "Handwritten Notes" is depicted as a typical hagiographic heroine - "righteous". With the help of traditional mechanisms, the (auto) sacralization and self-realization of the author's personality takes place, carried out in the very act of her "handwritten" writing. “Memoirs” by A. E. Labzina in their internal semantics are a unique female text for the Russian religious and mystical tradition, telling about the “earthly” wanderings of the Soul-Woman. Conceptually, the level of idealization of the heroine in this case turns out to be extremely high, despite the apparent simplicity of the narration. The personality of the heroine in E. R. Dashkova’s “Notes” is not only idealized, but is a model of a universal female personality. This universalism is manifested in the embodiment of two principles (male and female), two cultural models (enlightenment and hagiographic) and in the assignment of demiurgic functions by the female personality / But at the same time, the female personality turns out to be precisely the “Russian personality” in the Notes, over whose characteristics there are so many Dashkova's contemporaries thought and created her at the same time. "Notes" of Catherine II are a unique multi-code text, the main communicative event of which was before the creation of a great history great empress empresses. Catherine re-created herself in history, interpreting her heroine in the context of such complex and new semantic formations for culture as “woman and power” and “woman in Russian history”, which, under the influence of her writing, are still thought of as “golden ■” century" of Russia.
Thus, women's memoirs,; memoirs, notes of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries expressed in themselves "social and cultural activities verbalized in the utterance” [Samorukova 2002: 4]. Women's writing occupied the most important niche in the Russian literature of its time, since it was such a socially significant cultural activity, and, what should be emphasized, it was especially significant for the Russian culture of the period under review. Working with the word, modeling the ideal female image in the culture of the New Age - all this played a huge role in shaping (and for researchers - in understanding) the cultural field of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries. That is why the syntagmatics of memoir texts cannot be considered outside their communicative component. In this case, the autobiography becomes the object of literary criticism, and the researcher answers not the question of the "reliability" of the text, but the question of how exactly this or that text is made, where is the border that A. Ya. Eurevich designated as the border between "History and Fiction", what is their interaction, and, finally, what is their direct or indirect influence on the formation of women's discourse and on the tradition of its perception in the subsequent cultural paradigm.
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Memoirs are testimonies of participants or eyewitnesses of any historical event, compiled on the basis of personal impressions. Reproducing the most important aspects of reality, the memoirist seeks to determine his place in what happened, to assess historical events. This makes memoirs a valuable source for studying the psychological aspects of the development of society, determining the connection between events taking place in the past, for deciphering incomplete, inaccurate or deliberately distorted information from other historical sources. Memoirs serve as an additional source of factual material on topics. They are usually created after a long period of time and contain a retrospective, preconceived view of the events described. Depending on the object of recollection, they are a biography of the author, a remembrance of a separate event, a historical figure, etc.
A feature of memoir literature is their documentary nature, which is based on the testimonies of memoirists, eyewitnesses of the events described. Memoirs are not only a fixation of the events of the past, they are a confession, an excuse, an accusation, and thoughts of a person. Of course, memoirs are subjective, since they bear the imprint of the author's personality. Memoirs are not alien to the brilliance of prose, the partiality of journalism, and validity. Therefore, the lines that separate memoir literature from fiction, journalism, and even scientific research are far from always distinguishable.
The nature of the content of the memoir heritage is associated with the personality of the author, the depth of his intention and also depends on the significance of the events described. If the author is a historically significant person, he himself is especially interesting, his views and ideas, his attitude to the events of which he was an eyewitness. At the same time, memoirs cannot be considered a product of exclusively personal origin. They inevitably bear the stamp of their time. The sincerity of the memoirist, the completeness and reliability of his impressions depend on the era in which the memoirs were written and published. Of no small importance is the object of memories: the event or person about which the memoirist writes. A memoirist often first of all wants to show his role in this event, to emphasize his significance in the events described, of which he was a contemporary.
The sources of memoir literature itself can be written and oral. Written documents are a wide variety of documents: operational documents of military headquarters, excerpts from letters and diaries, newspaper reports, fragments of departmental documentation, etc. Oral sources are also involved in writing memoirs. It happens that the stories of other people are the only channels of knowledge about a particular fact. In this regard, memory remains the most important source of memoirs. Here, much depends on the reliability of the memory of the memoirist, and on his ability to accurately convey information about events to the reader. At the same time, the time distance makes it possible to assess the past more calmly, to take an objective look at one's own person, to place accents in a more balanced way, to single out the main thing from the particular, etc. One of the effective methods for checking the completeness and reliability of memoirs is their comparison with other sources Chernomorsky M.N. Memoirs as a historical source. - M., 1959. - S. 395 ..
A feature of memoir literature is the correspondence to historical events, the chronological sequence of the narrative, the use of artistic techniques. They presuppose an appeal to the distant past, a reassessment of current events from the height of the experience accumulated by the memoirist. In terms of relative reliability, lack of fiction, memoirs are close to historical prose, scientific biographical, autobiographical and documentary historical essays. At the same time, memoirs are distinguished from autobiography by the installation of reflecting not only the author's personality, but also the historical reality in which he was involved. - M., 1982. - S. 65 .. Unlike the scientific genre, memoir literature involves a personal assessment of events. In this regard, in terms of actual accuracy, the reproduction of the material is often inferior to the document. Researchers are forced to subject events from the memoirs of socio-political and cultural figures to critical analysis with the information available in other documentary sources Cardin V. Today about yesterday. Memoirs and Modernity. - M., 1961. - P.45.. Memoir literature reflects not only social events, the lives of individuals, but also the motives, goals of their activities, personal experiences. Due to this feature, historians attribute memoir literature to the group of the most complex, multifaceted sources that cannot be replaced by either documentary sources or historical and literary worksPavlovskaya S.V. Memoirs and diaries of Russian historians as a historical source for studying the socio-political and scientific-pedagogical life of Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. // Abstract of diss. cand. ist. Sciences. - Nizhny Novgorod, 2006. .
The problem of classification of memoir heritage in the historical literature is debatable. Researcher S. Gelis proposes to divide memoirs into categories depending on the role, place and relative weight of the author of the memoirs in the events described. According to this principle, the researcher divides the memoirs into the memoirs of the organizer, the memoirs of the participant, the memoirs of the witness, the memoirs of the eyewitness, the memoirs of the contemporaryGelis S. .
Scientist M.N. Chernomorsky distinguishes four varieties of memoir sources: full biographies - memories covering a long period of time; memories covering a certain period of time; memories of individual events; diaries; literary recordsChernomorsky M.N. Memoirs as a historical source. Textbook on source studies of the history of the USSR. - M., 1959 - S. 74 ..
Researcher L.G. Zakharova proposed the division of memoirs according to the type of activity as a basis: memoirs and diaries of statesmen, memoirs of public figures, memoirs of landowners and commercial and industrial figures, memoirs of scientists and cultural figures, memoirs of clerics, memoirs of military leaders Zakharov L.G. Memoirs, diaries, private correspondence of the second half of the 19th century // Source study of the history of the USSR. / ed. I.A. Fedosova.- M., 1970.- S. 369-370..
L.I. Derevnina proposes to base the classification on the principle of differences in the author's individuality and position. From this point of view, the researcher considers memories as the author's consideration of the past from the standpoint of the present; diaries - the author's consideration of the past from positions characteristic of the author in this very past. On this basis, L.I. Derevnina distinguishes the following groups of memoirs: memoirs, diaries, transcripts and literary record Derevnina L.I. On the term "memoirs" and the classification of memoir sources (historiography of the issue) // Questions of archiving. - 1963. - No. 4. - P.45..
S.S. Mintz offers an unconventional way of grouping memoir sources. She proposes to accept the subjective nature of memoirs as the basis for grouping sources of this type, reflecting the objectively existing different levels of awareness by the individual of interpersonal and social relations Mints S.S. On the peculiarities of the evolution of memoir sources (to the formulation of the problem // History of the USSR.-1979.- No. 2.- P. 69-70 .. Such a grouping, from her point of view, looks like this:
Sources reflecting the initial stage of the objective process of understanding the social significance of the individual: the isolation of the individual from the social environment surrounding him (egocentric sources, often opposing the individual to the described society);
Sources reflecting the individual's weak awareness of the mechanism of social relations: the degree of awareness of the participation of memoir authors in interpersonal relations does not rise above defending, sometimes unconsciously, the interests of a small corporately closed group to which the memoirist belongs;
Sources reflecting the degree of awareness of their authors of interpersonal relations: the self-consciousness of the individual rises to the level of conscious acceptance of the interests of a certain class;
Sources reflecting the highest degree of mastering the mechanisms of social relations by an individual: the self-awareness of the individual is inseparable from the awareness of the public interests and needs of society as a whole.
The author stipulates that when using such a grouping when conducting a specific historical study, it is impossible to do without observing the principle of historicism, since the role of a separate link is manifested in its entirety only taking into account the characteristics of the historical era. The difference and advantages of its classification by S.S. Mints sees that it is based not on a formal, but on a qualitative sign that characterizes the inner essence of memoir sources Sheretov S.G. Problems of classification of memoir sources in Soviet historiography of source studies. // Bulletin of the University of Kainar, 2002. - No. 2. - P.54. .
In addition, the following classifications of memoir literature are common among researchers: about events described in memoirs according to the thematic and chronological principle (for example, about the October Revolution and the Civil War, about the Great Patriotic War, etc.); by personalities (for example, memories of V.I. Lenin, etc.); classify by origin (i.e. who wrote the memoirs) (for example, memoirs of statesmen, memoirs of literary and artistic figures, military memoirs, etc.); memoirs according to the method and form of reproduction (for example, memoirs proper, literary record, interviews, diaries). The nature of the memoirs, the degree of their reliability, completeness, concealment of information, understatement are strongly influenced by the era in which the memoirs were created. Therefore, it is legitimate to classify memoir literature according to the chronological principle: memoirs written in the 1920s; memoirs of the 30s - early 50s; memoirs of the "thaw" period of the 60s; memoirs of the 60-80s, etc. Derevnina P.I. On the term "memoirs" and the classification of memoir sources // Issues of archiving. - 1963. - No. 4. - S. 125.
It should be noted that diaries are closely related to memoirs - a set of daily or periodic fragmentary entries of the author, setting out the events of his personal life against the background of the events of his contemporary historical reality. The diary is the primary form of memoir literature, which is devoid of an event narrative. Diaries differ from memoirs in that the entries in them are recorded immediately after an event.
Diaries can be divided into two categories: diary entries, simply stating the sequence of events, the author's attitude towards them. Such entries can sometimes be hasty, the author does not care about the form of presentation in them. The second category of records is a peculiar form of artistic creation. Such records are characterized by careful study of the text. This is not about artistic delights, but about a particularly high form of poetic comprehension of reality by a creative person and a truthful, accurate, expressive reproduction of his perception of the world.
Memoirs and notes are a special, yet more complex form of memoir literature. Memories are not only a dispassionate fixation of the events of the past, they are a confession, an excuse, an accusation, and thoughts of a person. Therefore memories are subjective. In his memoirs, the author describes a large period of time, analyzes events from the angle of a certain concept. Memories are devoid of randomly described events.
A special form of memoirs is an autobiography. This is a form of biography where the main character is the author. The autobiography is written in the first person and covers most of his life. An autobiography is not just introspection, it requires a certain narrative form. This is a brief description of important turning points in the history of the individual. When evaluating autobiographical records, it should be borne in mind that these records are often compiled with the explicit purpose of self-justification, self-defense of their author. It should be noted that memoirs are not identical to autobiographies. The memoirist tries to comprehend historical events through the prism of his own consciousness, to describe his actions as part of a common process, and in autobiography the emphasis is on the inner life of a person. When using memoirs as historical sources, there is always the question of how much you can trust what is written in them. The comparison method allows to identify some inaccuracies. An important role in confirming or refuting the facts stated in the memoirs belongs to the reference literature relating to the time reproduced on the pages of the memoirs.
Researcher Grebenyuk O.S. notes that the genre of autobiography is widespread when writing scientific research. He distinguishes two types of autobiographies: the first is a brief and formal official autobiography, dryly listing the facts of life, and the second is an autobiography as an individual's desire to comprehend his life path and his mental and spiritual self-development. These are detailed artistic and philosophical-reflexive texts. Biographies of this kind reveal not only the process of self-conversion, but also the very process of its constitution as a holistic experience. Although an autobiography aims to create an image of oneself as a result of reflective experience, this image is always created taking into account who will read the autobiographical text. In autobiographies, literary form can conflict with content: self-condemnation can turn into narcissism. This is not surprising, since the author of his own biography is almost always a “positive hero”, he treats his own life biasedly, and it is difficult for him to maintain objectivity. The detailed autobiographical text does not simply list the events of the author's life, but contains a series of assessments that replace each other. On the one hand, the author wants to see the integrity of himself, to understand himself in the context of self-fulfillment, on the other hand, he changes his assessments to another. This creates tension and openness of the autobiography. The author of an autobiography appears simultaneously in two persons: on the one hand, he is an active, thinking, remembering, text-creating subject; on the other hand, he is the object of description, therefore, in the memories, he can go from the first to the third person, when a person calls himself by name and gives himself distant characteristics Grebenyuk O.S. Autobiography: philosophical and cultural analysis. / Abstract. diss. cand. philosophy Sciences. - Rostov-on-Don, 2005..
Letters are a unique, unlike any other type of historical source. They are of great value for historical research. In source studies, they can be viewed in several ways: as a newspaper genre; as a kind of business documents; Letters to well-known political figures, writers, artists, etc. have an independent significance; as a kind of epistolary genre.
For the convenience of characterizing the letters, we will carry out a small classification of them: regular mail to newspapers, including letters published and stored in the archives of the newspaper. One can especially single out a subgroup of letters received in connection with some anniversary or significant event, discussion of some important document, etc.: regular mail to state and public institutions (complaints, claims, proposals, denunciations, etc.); letters to political, public figures, scientists, representatives of art; private correspondence is a residual phenomenon of the once very common epistolary genre V.V. Kabanov. Source study of the history of Soviet society / http://www.opentextnn.ru/history/istochnik/kabanov/?id=1376.
Diaries, memoirs, autobiographical works, letters, like any other historical source, can play both a major and a secondary role for the historian. This is largely determined by the choice of topic and aspect of the study. So, to work on the biography of historical personalities, to recreate political history, to study the level of development of science, culture, art, diaries and memoirs can be considered as the main source. If we are talking about the study of topics of specific historical events, processes or phenomena, then memoirs, as a rule, are used as an additional source of information Pavlovskaya S.V. Memoirs and diaries of Russian historians as a historical source for studying the socio-political and scientific-pedagogical life of Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. // Abstract of diss. cand. ist. Sciences. - Nizhny Novgorod, 2006. .
Memoir literature can serve as historical material, documentary evidence, but, of course, only under the condition of critical verification and processing, which are usual for each historical source. The authenticity of the memoir, that is, its actual belonging to the author to whom it is attributed, must be subjected to an examination; its credibility. When deciding on the reliability of memoirs, one should take into account such features of the author of memoirs as memory, attention, type of perception, nature and working conditions, then - the use of sources in the work, etc. Of course, the errors of the memoirist's memory, its stability depending on on the length of the time interval separating the moment of the commission or observation of an event from its recording, etc., are easily corrected and replenished by other sources and do not represent a decisive “factor” in the question of the reliability of memoirs.
Thus, memoirs are the most important historical source, containing information not only about specific events, but also reflecting the direction of social thought of a particular era. At the same time, memoir literature is subjective, the main source of which is the memory of the author.
Memoirs are testimonies of participants or eyewitnesses of any historical event, compiled on the basis of personal impressions. Reproducing the most important aspects of reality, the memoirist seeks to determine his place in what happened, to assess historical events. This makes memoirs a valuable source for studying the psychological aspects of the development of society, determining the connection between events taking place in the past, for deciphering incomplete, inaccurate or deliberately distorted information from other historical sources. Memoirs serve as an additional source of factual material on topics. They are usually created after a long period of time and contain a retrospective, preconceived view of the events described. Depending on the object of recollection, they are a biography of the author, a remembrance of a separate event, a historical figure, etc.
A feature of memoir literature is their documentary nature, which is based on the testimonies of memoirists, eyewitnesses of the events described. Memoirs are not only a fixation of the events of the past, they are a confession, an excuse, an accusation, and thoughts of a person. Of course, memoirs are subjective, since they bear the imprint of the author's personality. Memoirs are not alien to the brilliance of prose, the partiality of journalism, and validity. Therefore, the lines that separate memoir literature from fiction, journalism, and even scientific research are far from always distinguishable.
The nature of the content of the memoir heritage is associated with the personality of the author, the depth of his intention and also depends on the significance of the events described. If the author is a historically significant person, he himself is especially interesting, his views and ideas, his attitude to the events of which he was an eyewitness. At the same time, memoirs cannot be considered a product of exclusively personal origin. They inevitably bear the stamp of their time. The sincerity of the memoirist, the completeness and reliability of his impressions depend on the era in which the memoirs were written and published. Of no small importance is the object of memories: the event or person about which the memoirist writes. A memoirist often first of all wants to show his role in this event, to emphasize his significance in the events described, of which he was a contemporary.
The sources of memoir literature itself can be written and oral. Written documents are a wide variety of documents: operational documents of military headquarters, excerpts from letters and diaries, newspaper reports, fragments of departmental documentation, etc. Oral sources are also involved in writing memoirs. It happens that the stories of other people are the only channels of knowledge about a particular fact. In this regard, memory remains the most important source of memoirs. Here, much depends on the reliability of the memory of the memoirist, and on his ability to accurately convey information about events to the reader. At the same time, the time distance makes it possible to assess the past more calmly, to take an objective look at one's own person, to place accents in a more balanced way, to single out the main thing from the particular, etc. One of the effective methods of checking the completeness and reliability of memoirs is their comparison with other sources.
A feature of memoir literature is the correspondence to historical events, the chronological sequence of the narrative, the use of artistic techniques. They presuppose an appeal to the distant past, a reassessment of current events from the height of the experience accumulated by the memoirist. In terms of relative reliability, lack of fiction, memoirs are close to historical prose, scientific biographical, autobiographical and documentary historical essays. At the same time, what distinguishes memoirs from autobiography is their focus on reflecting not only the personality of the author, but also the historical reality in which he was involved. In distinguishes from the scientific genre, memoir literature involves a personal assessment of events. In this regard, in terms of actual accuracy, the reproduction of the material is often inferior to the document. Researchers are forced to subject events from the memoir heritage of socio-political and cultural figures to critical analysis with the information available in other documentary sources. Memoir literature reflects not only social events, the lives of individuals, but also the motives, goals of their activities, personal experiences. Due to this feature, historians refer memoir literature to the group of the most complex, multifaceted sources that cannot be replaced by either documentary sources or historical and literary works.
The problem of classification of memoir heritage in the historical literature is debatable. Researcher S. Gelis proposes to divide memoirs into categories depending on the role, place and relative weight of the author of the memoirs in the events described. According to this principle, the researcher divides memoirs into memoirs of the organizer, memoirs of a participant, memoirs of a witness, memoirs of an eyewitness, memoirs of a contemporary.
Scientist M.N. Chernomorsky distinguishes four varieties of memoir sources: full biographies - memories covering a long period of time; memories covering a certain period of time; memories of individual events; diaries; literary records.
Researcher L.G. Zakharova proposed the division of memoirs according to the type of activity as a basis: memoirs and diaries of statesmen, memoirs of public figures, memoirs of landowners and commercial and industrial figures, memoirs of scientists and cultural figures, memoirs of clergymen, memoirs of military figures.
L.I. Derevnina proposes to base the classification on the principle of differences in the author's individuality and position. From this point of view, the researcher considers memories as the author's consideration of the past from the standpoint of the present; diaries - the author's consideration of the past from positions characteristic of the author in this very past. On this basis, L.I. Derevnina distinguishes the following groups of memoirs: memoirs, diaries, transcripts and literary records.
S.S. Mintz offers an unconventional way of grouping memoir sources. She proposes to accept the subjective nature of memoirs as the basis for grouping sources of this type, reflecting the objectively existing different levels of an individual's awareness of interpersonal and social relations. Such a grouping, from her point of view, looks like this:
Sources reflecting the initial stage of the objective process of understanding the social significance of the individual: the isolation of the individual from the social environment surrounding him (egocentric sources, often opposing the individual to the described society);
Sources reflecting the individual's weak awareness of the mechanism of social relations: the degree of awareness of the participation of memoir authors in interpersonal relations does not rise above defending, sometimes unconsciously, the interests of a small corporately closed group to which the memoirist belongs;
Sources reflecting the degree of awareness of their authors of interpersonal relations: the self-consciousness of the individual rises to the level of conscious acceptance of the interests of a certain class;
Sources reflecting the highest degree of mastering the mechanisms of social relations by an individual: the self-awareness of the individual is inseparable from the awareness of the public interests and needs of society as a whole.
The author stipulates that when using such a grouping when conducting a specific historical study, it is impossible to do without observing the principle of historicism, since the role of a separate link is manifested in its entirety only taking into account the characteristics of the historical era. The difference and advantages of its classification by S.S. Mints sees it in the fact that it is based not on a formal, but on a qualitative sign that characterizes the inner essence of sources of a memoir nature.
In addition, the following classifications of memoir literature are common among researchers: about events described in memoirs according to the thematic and chronological principle (for example, about the October Revolution and the Civil War, about the Great Patriotic War, etc.); by personalities (for example, memories of V.I. Lenin, etc.); classify by origin (i.e. who wrote the memoirs) (for example, memoirs of statesmen, memoirs of literary and artistic figures, military memoirs, etc.); memoirs according to the method and form of reproduction (for example, memoirs proper, literary record, interviews, diaries). The nature of the memoirs, the degree of their reliability, completeness, concealment of information, understatement are strongly influenced by the era in which the memoirs were created. Therefore, it is legitimate to classify memoir literature according to the chronological principle: memoirs written in the 1920s; memoirs of the 30s - early 50s; memoirs of the "thaw" period of the 60s; memoirs of the 60-80s, etc.
It should be noted that diaries closely adjoin memoirs - a set of daily or periodic fragmentary notes of the author, setting out the events of his personal life against the background of events of contemporary historical reality. The diary is the primary form of memoir literature, which is devoid of an event narrative. Diaries differ from memoirs in that the entries in them are recorded immediately after an event.
Diaries can be divided into two categories: diary entries, simply stating the sequence of events, the author's attitude towards them. Such entries can sometimes be hasty, the author does not care about the form of presentation in them. The second category of records is a peculiar form of artistic creation. Such records are characterized by careful study of the text. This is not about artistic delights, but about a particularly high form of poetic comprehension of reality by a creative person and a truthful, accurate, expressive reproduction of his perception of the world.
Memoirs and notes are a special, yet more complex form of memoir literature. Memories are not only a dispassionate fixation of the events of the past, they are a confession, an excuse, an accusation, and thoughts of a person. Therefore memories are subjective. In his memoirs, the author describes a large period of time, analyzes events from the angle of a certain concept. Memories are devoid of randomly described events.
A special form of memoirs is an autobiography. This is a form of biography where the main character is the author. The autobiography is written in the first person and covers most of his life. An autobiography is not just introspection, it requires a certain narrative form. This is a brief description of important turning points in the history of the individual. When evaluating autobiographical records, it should be borne in mind that these records are often compiled with the explicit purpose of self-justification, self-defense of their author. It should be noted that memoirs are not identical to autobiographies. The memoirist tries to comprehend historical events through the prism of his own consciousness, to describe his actions as part of a common process, and in autobiography the emphasis is on the inner life of a person. When using memoirs as historical sources, there is always the question of how much you can trust what is written in them. The comparison method allows to identify some inaccuracies. An important role in confirming or refuting the facts stated in the memoirs belongs to the reference literature relating to the time reproduced on the pages of the memoirs.
Researcher Grebenyuk O.S. notes that the genre of autobiography is widespread when writing scientific research. He distinguishes two types of autobiographies: the first is a brief and formal official autobiography, dryly listing the facts of life, and the second is an autobiography as an individual's desire to comprehend his life path and his mental and spiritual self-development. These are detailed artistic and philosophical-reflexive texts. Biographies of this kind reveal not only the process of self-conversion, but also the very process of its constitution as a holistic experience. Although an autobiography aims to create an image of oneself as a result of reflective experience, this image is always created taking into account who will read the autobiographical text. In autobiographies, literary form can conflict with content: self-condemnation can turn into narcissism. This is not surprising, since the author of his own biography is almost always a “positive hero”, he treats his own life biasedly, and it is difficult for him to maintain objectivity. The detailed autobiographical text does not simply list the events of the author's life, but contains a series of assessments that replace each other. On the one hand, the author wants to see the integrity of himself, to understand himself in the context of self-fulfillment, on the other hand, he changes his assessments to another. This creates tension and openness of the autobiography. The author of an autobiography appears simultaneously in two persons: on the one hand, he is an active, thinking, remembering, text-creating subject; on the other hand, he is the object of description, therefore in memories it is possible to pass from the first person to the third person, when a person calls himself by name and gives himself distant characteristics.
Letters are a unique, unlike any other type of historical source. They are of great value for historical research. In source studies, they can be viewed in several ways: as a newspaper genre; as a kind of business documents; Letters to well-known political figures, writers, artists, etc. have an independent significance; as a kind of epistolary genre.
For the convenience of characterizing the letters, we will carry out a small classification of them: regular mail to newspapers, including letters published and stored in the archives of the newspaper. One can especially single out a subgroup of letters received in connection with some anniversary or significant event, discussion of some important document, etc.: regular mail to state and public institutions (complaints, claims, proposals, denunciations, etc.); letters to political, public figures, scientists, representatives of art; private correspondence is a residual phenomenon of the once very widespread epistolary genre.
Diaries, memoirs, autobiographical works, letters, like any other historical source, can play both a major and a secondary role for the historian. This is largely determined by the choice of topic and aspect of the study. So, to work on the biography of historical personalities, to recreate political history, to study the level of development of science, culture, art, diaries and memoirs can be considered as the main source. If we are talking about the study of topics of specific historical events, processes or phenomena, then memoirs are usually used as an additional source of information.
Memoir literature can serve as historical material, documentary evidence, but, of course, only under the condition of critical verification and processing, which are usual for each historical source. The authenticity of the memoir, that is, its actual belonging to the author to whom it is attributed, must be subjected to an examination; its credibility. When deciding on the reliability of memoirs, one should also take into account such features of the author of the memoirs as memory, attention, type of perception, nature and working conditions, then - the use of sources in the work, etc. Of course, the errors of the memoirist's memory, its stability depending on the duration of the time interval separating the moment of the commission or observation of an event from its recording, etc., are easily corrected and replenished by other sources and do not constitute a decisive “factor” in the question of the reliability of memoirs.
Thus, memoirs are the most important historical source, containing information not only about specific events, but also reflecting the direction of social thought of a particular era. At the same time, memoir literature is subjective, the main source of which is the memory of the author.
Memoir legacy
statesmen of the early 20th century.
(S.Yu. Witte, P.N. Milyukov, P.A. Stolypin, A.I. Guchkov,
1) Theoretical approaches: the concept of "gynocriticism" In 1985, a book was published in the United States, edited by Elaine Showalter. New feminist critique, which collected classic works on the poetics of feminism by such authors as Annette Kolodny, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Bonnie Zimmerman, Rachel DuPlessis, Alicia Ostriker, Nancy Miller, Rosalind Coward and others. genres of literature created by women; the study of new subjects - such as the psychodynamics of female creativity, linguistics and the problem of female language, the trajectory of individual or collective female authorship, the history of women's literature and the study of individual writers and their works.
In her famous article "On the Question of Feminist Poetics," 2 Elaine Showalter argues for two main methods of analyzing "women's literature":
1) "feminine criticism" - the feminine is reduced to patriarchal sexual codes and gender stereotypes of a male-constructed literary history, which is based on the exploitation and manipulation of traditional female stereotypes;
2) "gynocriticism" - builds new types of women's discourse independently of men's and refuses to simply adapt masculine/patriarchal literary theories and models. The woman in this type of discourse is the author of the text and the producer of textual meanings, expressing new models of literary discourse, which are based on women's own experience and experience. "Gynocriticism," Showalter says, begins when we free ourselves from the linear and absolute male literary history, stop fitting women into gaps between the lines of male literature, and focus instead on the new visible world of female culture itself.
2 Elaine Showalter, "Towards a Feminist Poetics", in Elaine Showalter, ed., The New Feminist Criticism. Essays on Women, Literature and Theory(New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 125-143.
Based on the methodology of "gynocriticism", Elaine Showalter identifies three main methods of writing in the development of women's literature: 1) representation of the "feminine" - imitation of the canons of the dominant / patriarchal literary tradition and the internalization of traditional gender standards of art and social roles; 2) representation of the "feminist" - a protest against the dominant / patriarchal standards and values of culture and language, the protection of minority rights and values, including the demand for women's autonomy; 3) representation of "feminine" - as a specific female identity, different from the male canon of representation and letters. 3
2) Woman-Centered Literature: "A Time of Innocence"
The female-centered tradition in literature is the tradition of studying female authors, female heroines. and"female" genres of writing (verse, short story, autobiography, memoirs, diaries); the main concept is the concept of female authorship, determined by the principle of sex, and the basic theoretical construct is the idea of female emancipation in literature.
Ellen Moers, literary woman(1978) 4 - a pioneering attempt to describe the history of women's literature separately from men's: the literary tradition is considered here in terms of the continuity of women's authorship and the mutual influence of women writers on each other, as well as women's literary-emotional textual communication and interaction. Moers insists on different conditions for the formation of gendered authorship in classical Anglo-American literature: if male authorship was formed in the public space of the university, male friendship and public literary discussions (Moers cites the example of Cole Ridge and Wordsworth, who graduated from Cambridge), then a woman deprived of the "opportunity education and participation in public life, isolated in the space of the house, limited in travel, painfully limited in friendship”, is formed as an author in
3 Elaine Showalter, Towards a Feminist Poetics, pp. 137-139.
4 Ellen Moers, Literary Women(London: The Women's Press, 1978).
private, intimate space of the family and intimate reading (Moers refers in this case to a contemporary of Cole Ridge and Wordsworth, Jane Austen). In this situation of female socialization in a private space, the greatest influence on female authors, according to Moers, is exerted by other female authors who precede them, and not by male authors, because only through female authorship can they draw analogies with their own feelings and experiences, usually not fixed. -by men. It can be argued, says Moers, that as a result, the female literary tradition seems to "replace" the male for female authors - regardless of the historical period, national context, or social conditions of women writers. All in all, the book makes for an excellent initial introduction to women's literature and feminist literary criticism.
3) "Women's Experience"and "Women's Literature": Extraliterary Criteria in Literature
The main goal of this theoretical direction is the search for specific "female" means of literary expression to reflect the specific female subjectivity in literature. One of the main theses of this approach is the thesis about the importance of empiricism and extra-literary parameters of the study of women's literature - in other words, the thesis of "women's experience" that differs from men's. One of the constructs of “female experience” in literary theory is the construct of “secondary authorship”, since it is implicitly assumed that well-known (that is, women writers included in the literary canon) share gender and language norms and stereotypes that are dominant for this stage of culture, interpreting and internalizing patriarchal aesthetic and social values (otherwise they would not have entered the canon). This approach is most fully implemented in the books of Elaine Showalter: Literature of Their Own: British Women Writers from Brontë to Lessing(1977), Women's madness. Women, madness and English culture, 1830-1980(1985), Sexual anarchy. Gender and culture at the turn of the century(1990) and others.
Elaine Showalter, Literature of Their Own: British Women Writers from Brontë to Lessing(1977) 5 -
examines the work of women writers who are considered secondary from the point of view of the "big" literary discourse, representing marginal subjectivity and marginal practices of linguistic expressiveness, which correspond to a certain (affective) topology of female subjectivity.
Showalter argues that the peculiarity of the marginal/secondary topology of the feminine in the literature of the 19th century was determined by the fact that women writers were primarily interpreted by culture according to a biological criterion - as women (with their affects, sensibility and emotions), and only secondarily according to professional - as a writer. As a result, female creativity was interpreted not as a technological result of writing, but as a result of the natural creativity and psychological characteristics of a woman, her special intense (bodily, affective) unique states, that is, as a result of a “demonic female genius” (by analogy with the male bodily “romantic genius in Romantic philosophy). In other words, the construction of female subjectivity was defined through the construction of deviation and the corresponding feeling of guilt in relation to “normative”/male subjectivity. Hence the corresponding female affective expressiveness (“the language of madness”) in 19th-century women's literature as the main form of manifestation of female subjectivity. And only at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries in the work of women writers, according to Showalter, there is a refusal to label their own subjectivity as deviant, marginal and affected.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar Mad in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Literary Imagination of the 19th Century(1979) 6 - A classic study of women's literature in feminist literary criticism. Unlike Showalter, the authors explore the work of not minor, but famous women writers such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley,
5 Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own. The British Women Novelists
from Bronte to Lessing(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).
6 Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman
Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination(New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1979).
George Eliot and Emily Dickinson, although in their work they also find a patriarchal interpretation of women's literature as pathology and madness, as well as a stable binarism of the feminine in traditional culture: a woman is either a monster and a witch, or an angelic saint. The authors argue that women writers in a patriarchal culture inevitably fall into its discursive traps, since in any case they are forced to dramatize the ambivalent division between two possible images of the feminine: the traditional patriarchal image and simultaneous resistance to it. This "gap", according to the authors, forms the ambivalent structure of female authorship as the structure of "madness". Another symbol of the “crazy” identity of female writers, which Gilbert and Gubar also use in their study, is the mirror symbol, which expresses the female dramatic state of the gap: the desire to conform to male normative ideas about a woman and the simultaneous desire to reject these norms and ideas.
Thus, Gilbert and Gubar not only consistently explore the tradition of women's literature, but also problematize it, while avoiding the labels of “innocent historicism”.
4) Problemsand the search for new theoretical foundations: criticism of the concepts of "female authorship" and "female experience" in literature
Already in the late 80s, such a productive in In the 1970s, the construction of “a woman as the author of a text” caused several philosophical problematizations. According to Toril Moi, the main methodological problem of "women's literature" is the goal of creating a special, women's literary canon in its difference from men's. But the new canon can be no less repressive than the old one, Moy warns, following Foucault, by reminding that in Foucault's theory of marginal practices, the goal was to avoid any overbearing dominant canon, not to build a new one. 7 In addition, after the “death of the author” proclaimed by Barthes in 1977 (the text is not an expression of individual subjectivity or a mere representation of external
7 Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory(London and New York: Routledge, 1985), p. 78.
her sociality, but is an act of writing, material manipulation of signs, discursive structure, textual elements) it is impossible to talk about the author's authenticity in general, which means that it is impossible to establish the coding of authorship as female authorship. Women writers can produce masculine writing, and anti-feminist women can produce feminist writing. Therefore, the concepts of "women's literature" in feminist literary criticism are being replaced by the concepts of "women's reading" and "women's writing", using the concept of "female" not on the basis of biological gender authorship, but on the basis of various sexual styles of textual practices.
3. The concept of "women's reading"
1) The main provisions of the theory of "women's reading"
Barth's thesis about changing the politics of literature from the production of texts to their perception (the death of an author meant the birth of a reader) turned out to be very fruitful for feminist literary criticism: since the procedure of perception allows us to detect the multiplicity and ambivalence of text structures, it means that it also allows us to identify specifically gender / female textual reception. , which was considered "minor" in the history of "big"/male literature and criticism. Thus, it was discovered that from now on any text can be analyzed from a female/feminist point of view and that a special topology of female subjectivity, in contrast to male subjectivity, is associated with the structure of perception.
One of the leading characteristics in the structure of female perception is the characteristics of sexuality and desire, understood very broadly - as the dominant of sensuality in the structure of traditional subjectivity: if the traditional cultural stereotypes of male perception are built on the model of a rigid and rational "I"-identity, then the "female reading" of texts is based on the plural and multiple psychological and social feminine bodily experience. The concept of reading like female desire in feminist criticism is expressed in various literary concepts of "women's reading"
niya”, such as the “ethics of reading” by Alice Jardin; "frivolous reading" by Elisabeth Berg; reading as a "trance position" Katherine Stim-pson; reading as "gender marking" Monique Wittig; "overreading" by Nancy Miller (as "reading between the lines", "deciphering silence", "filling in the gaps of repressed expression"); "recovery reading" by Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert (i.e., the discovery of minor female authors, the representation of anonymous female experiences and experiences); "ecstatic reading" by Judith Vetterley ("a woman's reading of women's tests can and is eroticized reading").
From this, the task of women's criticism becomes clear - it consists in teaching a woman to "read like a woman." What does it mean?
1. It is reading outside the traditional theoretical discursive schemes of classical author-reader-genre-history literary theory, resisting conventional literary codification, the scientism of literary theory, and the pre-given parameters of an androcentric critical tradition. eight
2. This is the connection between textuality and sexuality, genre and gender, psychosexual identity and cultural authority. 9
3. The process of sexual differentiation in the procedure of reading must be considered primarily as a textual one - that is, as a process of production of meanings. By constituting a woman as an object at the moment of our reading, we not only read the text “gender-wise”, but also produce ourselves as women through the affectivity of the process of identification.
4. This reading is like a “women's desire”, 10 i.e., reading private, detailed, sensual, built on the principle of “a part instead of a whole”, which becomes a kind of autobiography and is indistinguishable in the end from the act of writing.
8 Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American
Fiction(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. viii.
9 Sandra M. Gilbert, “What Do Feminist Critics Want? A postcard from the
Volcano, in Elaine Showalter, ed., The New Feminist Criticism. Essays on
Women, Literature and Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 29-45.
10 Mary Jacobus, Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism(New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986).
At the same time, feminist criticism postulates the need for the concept of "women's reading" not only as a stylistic, but also as an ideological and political argument: "reading like a woman," according to Judith Vetterley, means liberating new meanings of the text a) from the point of view of women's experience, and also b) the right to choose what is most meaningful for women in the text. This thesis is complemented by the well-known thesis of Nancy Miller that feminist reading should not be a "poetics of impartiality", but, on the contrary, a constant reminder that there is nothing impartial in culture at all and that feminist criticism is simply not afraid to represent partiality in relation to women's values. being.
The principles of understanding "women's reading" in feminist literary criticism were most systematically expressed by Annette Kolodny in the article "Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts" in the book New Feminist Critique (1985). The article was written with the aim of polemically using the theses of the famous work of Harold Bloom "Misreading Card"(1975), which, according to Annette Kolodny, in his thesis "we are what we read" comes from the position of a gender-neutral reader, while a woman reader reads differently than a man. eleven
First, women's reading is less abstract than men's: a woman always reads her own real life experiment in the text. Women's reading is the deciphering and discovery of the symbolization of the usually repressed and inaccessible female reality and then "fitting" it into your daily life.
Secondly, in the reading procedure, a woman usually feels a situation of suppression of her feelings and resists this suppression by the force of her own affect.
Thirdly, in women's reading, special attention is paid to female images and female situations, which are deciphered by men as secondary and insignificant.
11 Annette Kolodny, "A Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts", in Elaine Showalter, ed., The New Feminist Criticism. Essays on Women, Literature and Theory(New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 46-62.
Annette Kolodny compares how the concept is used differently "reading as revision" Harold Bloom and feminist theorist Adrienne Rich: if for Bloom "revision" is a textual experiment with the aim of constructing another possible generally valid literary history, then for Rich the main goal of women's reading as "revision" is not a universally valid, but a personal unique story, the main thing in which - the possibility of transforming not the text, but one's own life as a history of suppression. 12
2) Criticism of the theories of "women's reading"
In the late 1980s, the notion of "women's reading" was also philosophically problematized: writing, according to Derrida, functions in a situation of radical absence of any empirically determined recipient of the text, the text never reaches its destination, and the reader is as dead as the author. . Therefore, in modern feminist literary criticism, not only the concept of “female authorship” is problematized, but also the concept of “female reader”, as well as specific “female reading”.
4. The concept of "women's writing"
1) The main provisions of the theory of "women's writing"
The concept of "women's writing" arises under the influence of the der-Ridaist concept letters(which he opposed to the concept of speech) as a search for new forms of discursive/philosophical expressiveness. According to Derrida, speech embodies phallic truth, while for the real practice of writing, the concept of truth is always something insignificant and secondary, since the main thing in writing is the experience of writing itself, the production of graphic compositions, and not how graphic the experience of writing corresponds to mental truth. As a result, "writing", as well as literature, are declared
12 Adrienne Rich, When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision in: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978(New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1979), p. 24.
a phenomenon that has a feminine nature, that is, the ability to avoid the male dominants of logocentrism.
In work jellyfish laugh(1972) 13 French philosopher and feminist theorist Hélène Cixous introduces for the first time the notion of "women's writing" that later became famous. (“ecriture feminine”), which is designed to free a woman from the masculine type of language, striving for a single truth, as well as from the restraining fetters of logic and the pressure of self-consciousness, the burden of which is inevitably present in any actual moment of the speech situation. The purpose of feminine language or feminine writing is decentration systems of traditional textual meanings. In this context, another well-known French philosopher and feminist theorist Lucie Irigare, instead of the traditional "phallic symbolism" in the practice of writing, suggests using opposing technologies "vaginal symbolism". The so-called phallic language, according to Irigare, is based on the semantic effect of the verbal opposition to have / not to have and its endless repetition, while the “vaginal symbolism” opposed to the phallic is capable of producing not repetitions, but differences both in the structure of meaning and in syntactic structure. Against the symbolic structure of the phallus as the structure of "one", the symbolic structure of the vagina puts forward neither "one" or "two", but "two in one" - that is, plurality, decenteredness, diffuseness, instead of identity relations, embodying relations of duration, the mechanism of action of which is not subject to the logical law of consistency (in particular, a woman can never give an unambiguous and consistent answer to a question, preferring to endlessly supplement it, endlessly move in clarifications, returning again and again to the beginning of her thought, etc.).
At the same time, feminist concepts of "women's writing" differ from the Derridaist concept of writing. The main difference is that feminist theories of writing are not limited to the theoretical interest or textual level of working with language, as is the case in the theory of feminine writing.
13 Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa", Signs 1 (summer, 1976), pp. 875-899.
go Derrida, but express in language the painful experience of female suppression in culture. Hence, the feminist deconstruction of traditional types of discourse (and text) has not so much a theoretical as a practical goal: not just the release of new textual/symbolic values, but the desire to express the forbidden - repressed - feminine / asymbolic experience carried out outside the discourse of meaning in traditional culture.
Feminist authors, following Jean-Jacques Rousseau, prefer to distinguish between two main types of language use: language rational and language expressive. Feminine types of language and writing belong to the strategies of expressive language - one that escapes beyond the language matrices of established meanings. Feminist authors are striving to restore this expressive femininity. In the interview "Language, Persephone and Sacrifice" (1985), Irigare uses the mythological image of Persephone, whom Demeter's mother is looking for and cannot find: only the echo of the disappeared femininity responds to her. Irigare calls the search for femininity the search for a language that “speaks before speech” - a kind of utopian language that speaks “outside and beyond words”, the meaning of which is not fixed in articulated speech.
Where to look for femininity? And how is femininity capable of expressing itself?...
1) Sixu gives the following answer to these questions: femininity is the female body and bodily relations with other bodies. But what, according to Sixu, is hidden under the concept of "body"? And under the concept of "female body"? And what does the feminist slogan mean "write the body"? In answering this question, Cixous again refers us to the Rousseauist conception of two types of language (rational and expressive). Only by using the second type of language - expressive, sensual language - can one discover the existence of a "body": a sensual formation that cannot be rationally comprehended. A man is always in control of his impulses, a woman is not. To write a text for a man means to use complete formulations and concepts; writing a text for a woman means prolonging the situation of incompleteness and infinity in the text. In a women's text there is not and cannot be any beginning or end; such text is not assignable. According to Sixu, the categories
Traditional language is prevented from directly perceiving the surrounding world by imposing a grid of a priori concepts or definitions on it. Such a perception of the world, according to Sixu, can only be resisted by a naive, not burdened by reflection perception that exists before any linguistic categories - the perception of a child or a woman. In the female perception of the world, as well as in the perception of the child, Siksu believes, not the categories of male rational thinking prevail, but ecstatic (“bodily”) communication with the world, which consists primarily of sensations of color, smell, taste. In other words, women's communication with the world is the communication of the physical body with the physical world of things.
2) In asserting the strategies of the female language, Shiksu and Iri-gare do not stop at the level of the use of words, but descend to a deeper level of grammar. Women's language tends to break the generally accepted syntax. Irigare substantiates the idea of "double syntax": the first expresses the logic of rational thinking, the second - the female repressed unconscious. In the second case, linguistic figures or images do not correlate with traditional logic.
2) Criticism of the concepts of "women's writing"
Modern criticism of the concepts of "female writing" is associated with a general criticism of essentialism in the interpretation of female subjectivity - reducing the structure of female subjectivity to an a priori and unchanging "female essence". Therefore, in modern feminist literary criticism, the analysis of “women’s writing” is carried out using the conceptual apparatus and methodology of gender theory, which can discursively reflect all the diversity and complexity of performative, not related to the unique female “essence” of gender identifications in modern literature.
5. Women's autobiography as a special type of "female experience"
The genre of autobiography, along with the genres of diaries and memoirs, traditionally belongs to the "feminine" genres of writing in the literary canon of "great literature". The main task of autobiographical women's writing, as defined in feminist literary criticism, is the task of self-representation of the female self. In this sense, the traditional concept autobiography in feminist literary criticism changes to the concept auto-gyno-graphy- with an emphasis on female specific subjectivity in autobiographical writing. fourteen
What are the main parameters of women's autobiography as a genre that stand out in feminist literary criticism?
1. In a woman's autobiographical writing, the whole woman's life is worthy of description, and not just the defining stages of this life. In terms of content, one of the main themes of women's autobiography is the theme of home and family (it is the family that is recognized as the main model for the formation of gender identity). The difference from classic women's autobiographies is that the decisive content parameter today is "fearlessness to talk about your body and sexuality" not as something secondary and additional to the main autobiographical plot, but as the main thing in it.
2. The formal sign of autobiographical writing remains the sign of writing in the first person, while a feature of a woman's autobiography is an appeal to personal experience not as a separate, but as a gender experience of a group.
3. There is a conscious or unconscious meaningful opposition of one's inner private world to the world of official history: in a woman's autobiographical text, it is often impossible to determine in principle which historical epoch it belongs to. This refusal or challenge to official history - through the representation of the themes of home, kitchen,
14 Elizabeth Wilson, Mirror Writing: An Autobiography(London: Virago, 1982), p. 53.
family life, women's and children's experiences and illnesses, etc. - is recognized as one of the conscious feminist gestures of women's autobiographical writing.
4. In the formal structure of the text, instead of a temporal narrative sequence of events, an emotional sequence is realized; the eventfulness of the “big story” is replaced by the female internal “affected history”. The main type of narrative linking becomes the type of "and...and...and...", in the terminology of Rosie Bridotti.
Foucault's concept of marginal practices had a huge impact on the concept of women's autobiography. Foucault draws an analogy between the traditional carriers of the discourse of recognition in culture - the criminals who produce numerous literature of confessions (the so-called literature of "gallow speeches"), the sick - and the female subject, represented in culture exclusively through the discourse of guilt. According to feminist researchers, a woman as a socially marginalized object in culture is left with one “privileged” place - a place recognized subjectivity: to the extent that the confessing woman says, and to the extent that she is censored and forbidden to speak, the whole range of female social identifications is formed. Foucault pays special attention to the fact that the discourse of recognition in culture is always the discourse of guilt, and that the "ideal" figure of the embodiment of guilt in history is a woman. 15 Indeed, the classic studies of women's literature by Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar prove that its main form is traditionally autobiographical writing as a letter of recognition, on the basis of which the distinction of genres is built: novella, story, diary, memoir, poetry.
Elaine Showalter applies Foucault's methodology of analysis of marginal practices to the analysis of the phenomenon of the feminine in culture as a "subjectivity of recognition" that is formed in various spheres of reality based on the analysis of the practices of female sexuality (Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Turn of the Century, 1991), Women's Madness (Women's madness. Women,
15 Foucault Michel. A History of Madness in the Classical Age. St. Petersburg: Universitetskaya kniga, 1997, p. 491.
Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980, 1985) and women's literature, including autobiographical (Their own literature: British women writers from Brontë to Lessing, 1977). Its main conclusion is the conclusion about the inevitable gender asymmetry in culture: if the concept of the feminine in it is always marked as a symbol of the irrational and guilty, the ultimate expression of which is the labeling of “madness”, then the concept of the masculine inevitably correlates with the concepts of reason and rationality. And although the concepts of female and male subjectivity may change in different historical eras, the gender asymmetry of the representational politics of female and male in culture, according to Showalter, remains unchanged: even when the phenomenon of the irrational is represented by a man (confession of sins, pathology or sexual perversions in the discourse of men prose of recognition at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries), at the symbolic level, he receives the inevitable marking of the feminine: “female madness” or “female sensuality” inside the male subject. 16
Foucault's methodological problem of analytics of female subjectivity as a discourse of recognition is a form of conceptual tension in modern feminist theory, in which today there are two main approaches to assessing women's discourse as a discourse of recognition. The theorists of “equality feminism” call for resistance to the patriarchal mechanisms of the production of female subjectivization in culture and equal mastering of male discursive values and norms (in particular, in assessing the female discourse of recognition, it is emphasized that a woman implements not a discourse of guilt, but a discourse of independence, self-affirmation and self-sufficiency). Difference feminist theorists insist that women's specific discourse (including autobiographical discourse as a discourse of recognition) is an alternative form of knowledge and an alternative form of subjectivity. A confessing woman, in their opinion, is not only an object of power, but also a subject of language, and a female television
16 Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 18301980(New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. four.
dream language as a language of recognition turns out to be that field of suggestive signs - will, desire and independent enjoyment - which undermines the norms of patriarchal culture. Therefore, women's autobiographical discourse, in their opinion, cannot be measured within the framework of traditional male discourse, in which it inevitably acquires secondary markings, and it is necessary to develop our own standards for the analysis of women's autobiographical writing.
Conclusion: The Significance of Feminist Literary Criticism for Literary Theory
The effect of feminist literary criticism on literary theory and culture at the end of the 20th century is truly stunning: many texts by female authors (including minor and forgotten ones) have been discovered and studied, not only in the traditions of the leading literatures of the world, but also in the literary traditions of various countries; a significant number of male and female authors of classical literature have been subjected to feminist analysis, from ancient times to the present day; many new interpretations of the classical literary tradition have been proposed; a new apparatus of literary theory has been created, enriched with the apparatus of feminist literary criticism, new strategies for analyzing literary texts have been introduced and are being used. It can be said that today there is no practice of reading a literary or philosophical text that would not take into account its possible gender or feminist interpretation. And most importantly, a new vast academic discipline has been created - feminist literary criticism, within which texts related to women's writing, women's style or women's way of being are produced.
As already noted, in contrast to the logic of essentialism (essentialist concepts of "women's literature", "women's reading" and "women's writing"), feminist theory of the late 20th century puts forward non-essentialist projects of female subjectivation in culture based on postmodern concepts of a decentered subject (in particular , performative
gender identification in the literature). It can be said that feminist literary criticism today is at the intersection of these two methodological approaches, theorizing female authorship and female literary creativity in the context of this methodological problematization. And it is in its mainstream in modern gender discourse that the conceptual meeting of the two main strategies for interpreting female subjectivity in the culture of the late 20th century - feminism and post-feminism - takes place, and further retheorization of the problem of female subjectivity in literary theory depends on their possible interaction and mutual influence on each other. .
What is Women's Literature? It would seem that the question should not cause difficulties. One would like to answer that this is literature written by women. You can add: for them, women. But then you catch yourself by the tongue. What is masculine literature then? Or is there just literature, but is there something dubious, sarcastically called "feminine"? Maybe fixing the gender in the name is a stupid, discriminating stereotype? Yes, there is Gone with the Wind, a girl-readable and re-read novel (and it’s worth remembering that Mitchell took the Pulitzer Prize that year from none other than Faulkner), but there’s also the love molasses-filled Songbird Wren, written by a man.
Maybe “femininity” is determined by the theme, style and issues? Shooting-killing games, hunting-fishing, night bars and other male adventures will be defined for men, and magnificent balls, detailed feelings, love triangles, betrayals, intrigues and longing for "female happiness" - the beautiful half? I remember how we were at the War and Peace school: the boys read about battles, the girls about balls, then they raised their hands at the right time - and everyone felt good from such a gender division. But no one thought that Tolstoy inserted pieces of female prose into his novel.
Why do the phrases "women's literature", "women's prose", "women's novel" have a secondary tinge, are perceived almost as a deviation from the norm?
Having asked these questions, I soon realized that I could not do without historical and cultural information. I'll start with history.
We know not so many names of women who left a mark in ancient literature, but there was the poetess Sappho depicted on Pompeian frescoes, whom the great men of that time admired, and Plato generally called the “tenth Muse”.
A thousand years ago, Sei-Syonagon and Murasaki Shikibu competed in writing skills, so much so that there is nothing to say about the men of that time; it was these ladies who laid the foundations of national Japanese literature.
In Europe, things were somewhat different. Before Marie Curie, only men taught at universities, although the French can boast of the activity of their great-great-grandmothers since the 17th century. And not only in the salons: Madeleine de Scudery became famous in precision literature, Madame de Sevigne - in the epistolary genre, and Madame de Lafayette is generally considered a fundamental classic and progenitor of the psychological novel. True, there is an interesting detail here: the lady published under a male pseudonym, published her main novel anonymously, and her name appeared on the cover almost a century after her death.
At that time, their famous 3Ks (Kinder, Kueche, Kirche), later voiced by Kaiser Wilhelm and clearly indicating the social role of a woman, reigned in the minds of the Germans, but there was also Sophia von Laroche, whose novel in letters became a pioneer of the genre and whom Goethe himself admired.
What happened in Russia, looking to the West in matters of culture? For a long time, women in Russia could not even dream of writing. The weaker sex was perceived only at the level of literary amusements of the court nobility, who used literature as an elegant pastime for educated women, along with music-making and embroidery. It never occurred to anyone that a woman could write a serious book. All criteria and norms were developed by men based on the texts of men, and the names of women writers appear only closer to the middle of the 19th century. These are Elena Gan and Maria Zhukova. The next generation gave Marko Vovchok, V. Krestovsky and V. Mikulich. All three are women, writing under male pseudonyms, as is George Sand. And this is not accidental: they understood that artistic creativity is not a woman's business. Against the backdrop of a bright galaxy of their male contemporaries, they look more like glimpses than equal stars in the writer's sky.
The Silver Age of Russian literature changed the situation in favor of women. Bright, original poetesses ceased to be embarrassed by “female” themes, brought physicality and sexuality into poetry, but still continued to call themselves poets, in a masculine way, and critics often judged not the work, but the author himself: “Look, look, even though she’s a woman , but something can!”
Soviet Russia proclaimed the equality of men and women, but this did not make the big personalities equally: L. Seifullina, A. Koptyaeva, G. Nikolaeva, V. Panova, O. Berggolts. The point of view was even expressed that for centuries, literary and intellectual work in general was mainly done by men, and this was supposedly fixed genetically.
Only since the 80s, towards the end of the century, against the backdrop of a general decline in literature and with the appearance of such names as Tolstaya, Ulitskaya, Petrushevskaya, there has been a strengthening of the position of women in writing.
What prevented women from declaring themselves in full voice? First of all, psychology based on traditions and stereotypes. The norm for the psychology of a woman of previous generations can be considered dependence and sacrifice. It is not for nothing that we find these features in Tatyana Larina, Natasha Rostova, Sonya Marmeladova. And if one of the women decided to take up literature seriously, then they were hindered by their own female experience, which certainly was not considered artistically interesting by anyone. Women writers were dependent on male expectations, forced to imitate in style, repeat themes and plots, instead of looking for ways to express their individuality.
And what can be better and more truthful in a woman than her feminine essence? Isn't a woman able to tell about herself and her experiences more vividly than any man? Is it because Dostoevsky's women (Nastasya Filippovna, Grushenka) are schematic, almost incorporeal, that it is more difficult for a man to portray them, looking from the outside, and not from the inside? After all, no matter how well the writer treats his hero of the opposite sex, he will always be an external object for him. As Viktor Erofeev said: “It's hard to imagine that Sonechka Marmeladova is a prostitute. She trades her body, which is not there. Here one also recalls the nominal purity of Turgenev's girls. It can be noted that, unlike painting, the image of a person of the opposite sex in fiction often turns out to be an image of a person in general.
It is logical to assume that women themselves are able to depict the female image not only with separate mean strokes, but also virtuoso subtly, akin to Flemish painting. Why, then, here and there, medieval disputes flare up about the purpose of a woman, the arguments of which are simply amazing.
Let's see what distinguishes us - men and women - in creativity, distinguishes us to such an extent that one half of cultured people consider the other, if not secondary and unsuitable for high art, then clearly less brilliant, but the poet and critic, professor of the Literary Institute and Academician Yuri Kuznetsov just thirty-five years ago confidently stated: “Women are performers, not creators. Women have not created a single great work ... ".
It is no secret that women are considered illogical, verbose and overly emotional, losing in these categories to men, which is automatically transferred to literature. The German philologist and philosopher Humboldt, for example, long ago assumed that “the masculine principle contains intense energy, generative force”, and the feminine “receptive principle, long-term stability and constancy”. Anthropologist and "grandfather" of neuro-linguistic programming Edward Hall wrote: "Speech and gender of the speaker are connected in the most obvious way. If the reader doubts this, let him try for a while to talk like a person of the opposite sex and see how long he manages to make others endure this.
However, relatively recently, linguistic studies of the characteristics of male and female speech have been carried out. The conclusion was unexpected: the higher the level of education, the smaller the differences in speech. These studies do not deny that we are different, but show the relativity of the very fact of difference. And one more thing: they bring us to the next no less interesting question: what level of culture corresponds in our view to the “typically female manner of narration”?! Are we not lowering the bar for women's prose ourselves, instead of raising it, moving away from the opposition of styles to a common, more intellectual denominator?
Yes, it just so happened that in the human mentality, masculine and feminine exist as elements of different cultural and symbolic series:
masculine - rational - spiritual - divine -... - cultural;
feminine - sensual - bodily - sinful -... - natural.
But as scientific research progressed, it became clear that from a biological point of view, there are much more similarities between men and women than differences. Many researchers even believe that the only clear and meaningful biological difference between women and men lies in their reproductive roles. Anthropologists, ethnographers and historians have long established the relativity of ideas about "typically male" or "typically female". What in one society is considered a male occupation (behavior, character trait), in another may be defined as female. So here we have more stereotypes than truth.
I want to explain right away why I delved into the gender issue of the fundamental differences between the sexes. The question is by no means idle. From the answer to it, as I see it, the solution to the problem of women's prose or women's literature in general will directly depend.
If we admit that there are almost no fundamental differences at the level of biology and psychology, and what distinguishes us in reality is the usual stereotypical behavior, fixed by social prescriptions, then those who say that there is only good and bad literature, which is not divided by gender and is neither male nor female. But then the word "femininity" in relation to literature will have to be replaced by weakness or a sign of the author's insufficient culture.
If we affirm that the mental organization of women is unique, that, unlike men's, it has plasticity, polyvalence, non-violence, and a number of other fundamental differences, then self-knowledge, self-expression of women in literature should be different from men's, and the conclusion suggests itself that women's literature should be not only to differentiate from the male, but also to approach it with other "non-male" requirements. After all, we do not force women to throw the shot in the same sector as men.
If we do not decide, but decide that our position is in the golden mean, then we will get an endless discussion on M and M literature and an unresolved literary problem, which we have now.
I pass from theory to practice. How did women themselves adapt to the current situation? And it's very simple. Consciously or unconsciously, they were divided into three currents:
1) Androgynous female prose - with a focus on male, the desire to assimilate male perception and eradicate typical "femininity" in oneself.
2) Annihilation female prose - with the desire to combine and mutually destroy the two principles, with an indefinite gender of the author.
3) Prose of the feminine type - a style of "women's writing" that is pronounced in style and subject matter.
Since the term "women's prose" is used more often in relation to the third type, let's look at exactly what features distinguish a typically female writing style from a typically masculine one, bearing in mind that we are talking about extreme positions on this relative scale.
In typically female prose, the family (even if it is an incomplete family), home, shared or unrequited love dominate. The woman is at the center of the story.
Relations with the opposite sex are considered from the standpoint of self-understanding of the heroines, a sense of their unique essence and difference from a man. Lots of details and specification: names, dates, names and surnames.
There is a tendency to decipher the behavior of others, to explain it in such categories as envy, selfishness, vanity, greed, which by and large is also present in typical female conversations.
Characteristic of typically female prose is the desire for secrets. Secrets, mystery and mysticism often become the motives of such works, if not the main theme of all creativity.
It is also interesting that women approach their speech much more carefully, striving to make it more literate, rich, stylish, individually colored with a special expression. Sometimes it turns into an excess of prettiness. Sometimes women complicate the way of transforming mental images into a verbal-logical series, reaching confusion.
The meticulously rendered internal monologues of the heroines often seem to be on the verge of pathology due to the desire to convey all the nuances of their complex reflections. It is generally more difficult for a woman to "chop off and throw away" the excess, everything seems important.
"Women's" prose is rich in experiments with changing the gender of the narrator, stylizing the speech of heroes to exaggeratedly different speech masks of heroes of the opposite sex.
A number of foreign and Russian researchers tried to generalize all the multiple distinguishing features. I will allow myself to use the results that seemed interesting to me, I present them practically without changes.
"Signs of female speech:
The use of diminutives such as doggie, little man, cheerful;
use of approximate notation;
a tendency to hyperbolic expression, exaggerated emphasis;
high concentration of emotionally evaluative words;
frequent use of interjections;
frequent use of pronouns such, such as with positive and negative connotations;
use of euphemisms;
excessive use of amplifying particles;
special emotionally colored words, adjectives denoting shades of colors, such as pistachio;
language clichés of politeness;
avoidance of neologisms.
Syntax level:
Sentences and texts are detailed, detailed and expressive;
frequent use of inversion;
the use of exclamatory and interrogative sentences;
the use of modal constructions expressing varying degrees of presupposition, uncertainty;
the predominance of simple and compound sentences;
"incomplete" sentences, ellipsis;
a composing way of linking simple sentences as part of a complex one;
disjunctive and rhetorical questions;
redundant repetitions;
"self-correction", search for the desired phrase.
General characteristics of speech:
Striving for harmonious communication;
verbal behavior is straightforward, unambiguous and open;
competent writing;
"conservatism": adherence to the language norm.
Signs of male speech:
Lexico-grammatical level:
The use of diminutives when describing situations with children or relatives, as well as when indicating the size or volume of the designated object;
tendency towards accuracy, terminology;
active use of the baggage of professional knowledge outside the sphere of professional communication;
a tendency to use expressive, stylistically reduced means;
the use of stylistically neutral evaluative vocabulary, neutral adjectives and abstract nouns;
use of neologisms;
use of technical terms and professional jargon in speech.
Syntax level:
The subordinating way of connecting simple sentences as part of a complex one;
preference in the use of complex sentences;
"logicality" of statements;
individual sentences and texts are concise, substantive and less dynamic;
the monotony of techniques in the transfer of an emotional state;
General characteristics of speech:
Tendency to conflict communication;
speech behavior is ambiguous, the desire to demonstrate status inequality;
deviation from the grammatical norm.
Of course, we are talking about the predominance of features, and not about the presence of all of the above in each individual author. And I repeat: when considering these differences, it should be remembered that they are less pronounced with a high level of education. They do not manifest themselves with constant intensity: a female author can easily use not only her own speech means, but can freely switch to another language code and use traditionally “male” speech means to solve certain artistic problems.
As much as I would like to draw a thick line and re-answer the question posed in the first sentence: “what is women's literature?”, I have to honestly admit: this is a phenomenon that I am only trying to realize in the process of working on an article. Most likely, if we talk about the distant future, we will still have unification, a common and indivisible literature, common problems, common themes. But for too long and in silence women have been watching the geniuses in trousers and bowlers, the pendulum must now swing in their direction. Maybe we were lucky enough to watch the birth of new literature, and soon we will have libraries overflowing with women classics, a string of Nobel laureates, and men will simply feel sorry - they will quietly disappear into the kitchens. For some time. Or maybe everything will be different. Therefore, it would be wise to simply observe, carefully peering into books written by gentle female hands, so as not to miss a single discovery. In the meantime, leave a simple definition: women's literature is everything that is written by a woman.
