Article

Name: L.N.Tolstoy’s artistic quest in the 1870s (unfinished stories «The Murderer of his wife» and «Stepan Semyonych Prozorov»)

Authors: Romanova Natalia Ivanovna

A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: Chosen as the object of analysis for the present paper are L.N. Tolstoy's artistic designs of the turn of the 1860s-1870s, containing the germs of the ideas of the writer’s late works. Described in detail on a basis of a variety of sources (epistolary, diary, memorial) is the history of the creation of the stories «The Murderer of his wife» and «Stepan Semyonych Prozorov». Based on the facts of Tolstoy’s personal and creative biography, the author of the paper defines more precisely the dates when these stories appeared and reveals their connections with the writer’s other works: «The Kreutzer Sonata», «Anna Karenina», «The ABC», etc. For the first time she discloses the artistic originality of the said stories, the peculiarities of their psychology, plot, system of images.

Keywords: l.n. tolstoy’s artistic creativity, history of the russian literature of the 19th century, poetics, plot, composition, system of images

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