А. М. REMIZOV AND FOLKLORE: ON THE ISSUE OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Abstract

The article presents a critical review of research works on the topic “Folklore-literary interaction in the creative activity of A.M. Remizov” published in Russian. The study of the topic has been conducted mainly within the framework of literary criticism. Meanwhile, for a writer known for his commitment to preservation and innovative approach to traditional literary genres, folklore is one of the dominant sources of creativity. Currently, Remizov studies cannot boast of generalizing works on folklorism in the writer’s creative activity and on the influence of oral folk art genres on his artistic system, so one of the aims of the article is to attract scholarly interest to the issue and stimulate further research in this area. The publication gives a brief description of the current state of research on the problem, identifies the main vectors of its consideration and reveals the academic lacunae. The author analyzes the works, which deal with the creative heritage from the point of view of folklore studies and address the problems of the typology of folklorism and mythologism of the writer, clarify the range of folklore sources and the specificity of working with them, as well as the role and function of the author’s comments on the miniatures of Posoloni. These notes to the texts were created under the influence of a literary scandal related to the accusation of the writer of plagiarism. The assessment of the events around this incident by specialists in Remisov studies and folklorists does not coincide, the article outlines prospects for further research. The author undertakes a detailed description of the influence of the texts of calendar rite, spiritual verses, fairy tale, conspiracy-spell tradition, folk drama, children’s folklore and Russian folk pictures on the writer’s creative activity. For the first time, the author poses a hypothesis about the possible influence of the aesthetics of rayok (“World Cosmorama”) on the work of A. M. Remizov by the example of the fairy-tale novella “What is Tobacco”, which which depicts the reformatting of the apocryphal model by artistic means of lubok and rayok. The analysis of numerous studies made it possible for the author of the article to conclude that the writer’s creative activity does not only reflect the real diversity of folklore genres but also such specific features of them as oral format and variability. The results of the study can be used in the design of the course of the history of Russian literature and folklore studies of the beginning of the early 20th century, in the studies dealing with folklore-literary interaction, and in popularization and publication of folklore texts.