Academic literature on the topic 'Picaresque literature Russian'

The association's ninety-seventh convention will he held 5–7 November 1999 at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, under the sponsorship of the dean of Letters and Sciences and the Departments of English and Languages and Literatures. Inger Olsen is serving as local chair. The program will represent the association members' diverse interests in all matters of language and literature in classical, Western, and non-Western languages. The thirty-one general sessions will include papers on classical, Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, English, American, and Asian literatures, as well as on linguistics, rhetoric, gay and lesbian literature, film, matrilineal culture, autobiography, poetry and poetics, and critical theory. Among the thirty special sessions are sessions on picaresque literature, Shakespeare and popular literature, Native American literature, Russian literature, Slavic literature, Toni Morrison in the 1990s, Caribbean literature, and cybertextbooks in foreign language education. Several special sessions have been organized by Portland State University and PAMLA affiliate organizations Women in French, MELUS, and the Milton Society of America. Registration at the conference will be $35 and $25. All paper sessions are scheduled for classrooms at Portland State University and will begin Friday at 1:00 p.m. and end Sunday at 1:00 p.m.

Purpose: to trace how the representative Russian science fiction texts reflect the process of the exploration of the Earths satellite, both in scientific/technical and socio-philosophical aspects. Methods: comparative-historical, mythopoetic, socio-historical, hermeneutical, structural analysis. Results: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the outstanding rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory, in his story On the Moon conjectured in detail the impression of an observer on its surface. The Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev developed Tsiolkovskys hypotheses in the story The Star KETs in which the Moon becomes accessible due to the construction of a space station in Earths orbit, named after the scientist: Star K(onstantin) E(duardovich) Ts(iolkovsky). In the Soviet Union, which was actively engaged in the research of the Moon, the interest in it was so great that it was reflected even in childrens literature. Simultaneously with the deployment of the Soviet lunar program, a fairy-tale novel by Nikolai Nosov Dunno on the Moon appeared. The novel shows the atmosphere of rivalry between the USSR and the United States in the exploration of the Moon. The science fiction vector is unfolded in the picaresque genre. In Victor Pelevins novel Omon Ra the question is raised not only of the research prospects of lunar landings, but also of the spiritual price of scientific search which implies the active participation of the state: is a free intellectual and technical search possible for astrophysicists, engineers, and cosmonauts under the pressure of acute political necessities?

This article conducts a chronological reconstruction of the key milestones of the reading path of V. S. Naipaul, as well as reviews the problems of his reader’s experience and the search for writing style. Emphasis is placed on the creative and personal relationship between V. S. Naipaul and his father S. Naipaul, who was his teacher and mentor, developed his literary taste, aptitude and style of the future Nobel laureate. Their collaboration draws the interest of researchers based on the fact that namely S. Naipaul introduced world literature to his son, affected his choice of books, and helped to understand a different sociocultural context. The author reveals the impact of the Russian writers (Gogol, Tolstoy) and the Spanish picaresque novel (“Lazarillo de Tormes”) upon writing style of V. S. Naipaul; as well as determines the reading preferences of V. S. Naipaul at a mature age. Among the authors who considerably influenced V. S. Naipaul in different periods of his creative path, the author names R. Kipling, D. Defoe, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. Conrad. The analytical overview of the “writer's library” and his reading preferences allows carrying out a more systematic, consistent, and logical examination of V. S. Naipaul's works. The idea of the circle of authors and writings that considerably influenced the creative personality of V. S. Naipaul gives the key to the analysis of quotations, borrowings, allusions and reminiscences, i.e. the problems of intertextuality in his prose fiction. V. S. Naipaul's essayistic writing has not been published in the Russian language; this article introduces it into the Russian scientific discourse in literary studies.

The chapter surveys forms of storytelling in prose, examining the relationship between the written and the oral against a backdrop of changing patterns of literacy. New writing is marked by humor and the carnivalesque, especially in works of popular literature that started out as oral tales, before eventually entering the written tradition either in printed versions or in manuscript copies. Literature offered escapist pleasures, and productive genres include the fabliau and fantasy tale, as well as picaresque fiction (or roguery tales) featuring characters that anticipate the “new men” of Petrine Russia by advancing socially against the odds through ambition, cunning, and lack. The chapter considers the degree to which the seventeenth-century popular fiction genuinely holds up a mirror to the trouble reality of the period; or whether the lessons it holds on the present are strongly conditioned by new forms of prose that originated in Western Europe.