Analysis of system of personages and composition of "The Double, or my Evenings in Malorossia" by А. Pogorelsky

Abstract

Antony Pogorelsky (1787-1836) (the pseudonym of А. А. Perovsky) was one of the writers active in the early stages of Russian romantic prose, when romanticism, with its new artistic outlook based on rapt attention towards and keen interest in the inner world of feelings and emotions of its literary heroes, replaced the literary movement of sentimentalism with its orientation toward the ideas of the enlightenment. The current article is aimed at the investigation of the first book by A. Pogorelsky "The Double, or My Evenings in Malorossia", the novelty of which lies not only in the fact that the book is directly correlated with the traditions of West European romanticism (which was undoubtedly well-known to the writer), but also in the introduction of a new principle of composition into Russian literature (the cycle of several stories united through dialogic framing), which was the first experiment of this kind in the Russian literary environment and would soon become one of the favourite techniques of other Russian romanticists.