Factuality And Fictionality In “Seventeen Moments Of Spring” By Yulian Semyonov

Abstract

Yulian Semyonov’s works have been popular among readers and viewers for more than half a century now. His best-known novel “Seventeen Moments of Spring” is a perfect example of Soviet mass prose. Philologists in their analyses identify both structural and linguistic characteristics of mass literature which proves that literary “low” works are created by the certain rules. That’s why the demand for mass literature research in conditions of book markets overflowed with different levels literature is of great current interest. The factual basis of the novel has not been considered before. The paper focuses on a research of “Seventeen Moments of Spring” in the aspect of its accuracy. The study’s purpose is to identify factual and fictional narratives of the novel with the object of definition the work’s genre. Alongside with the conventional conception of Semyonov’s novel as a detective story and political chronicle (this is how the author himself determinated its genre) the paper contains arguments for presence in it another genre variation of a novel. By means of comparative and intertextual methods the fictional and factual narrative were revealed. The principles of implementation of a fictional narrative in a novel were also noted. Results of the study show that the novel can be classified as documentary fiction and in a narrower sense as historical documentary due to being based on a historical fact. Along with that the novel is saturated with fictional narrative which interweaves with the factual basis. Semyonov’s novel fits the definion of a polygenre work.