Образ читателя в творческом наследии И.А. Гончарова: генезис и трансформация

Abstract

The article deals with the images of explicit and implicit readers in the early and late works of I.A. Goncharov: the stories “Dashing Sick” and “Happy Mistake”, the novels “Ordinary History” and “Oblomov”, literary and critical articles of the writer are also researched. The literary genesis of the reader’s image in the works of I.A. Goncharov is determined by the dialogue with N.M. Karamzin and A.S. Pushkin. It is studied how the image of the addressee changed in the creative heritage of I.A. Goncharov. It is concluded that in the early stories the reader’s appearance was gender specific, more often endowed with positive features; the relationship of the narrator with the male or female reader was built in accordance with the sentimental, romantic model of narration as emotionally close — the narrator anticipated the reader’s reactions, carefully and caringly treated his reader. In the novels “Ordinary History” and “Oblomov” the author refused to concretize the image of the addressee, reduced the number of references to him in the text, created a realistically generalized image of the reader and practically equalized him in rights with the narrator. In the course of the study, it was found that changes in the images of explicit readers were due to a change in the author’s ideas about the implicit reader: if at the beginning of I.A. Goncharov saw the reader as a demanding and strict judge who was a contemporary, then at the time of maturity the author insisted on the freedom of the reader’s reaction, believed that reading and understanding the text should become an independent work for each person.