Literary Works in the Ural Newspaper (1897–1908): Editorial Policy and Genre-Thematic Features

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to define the artistic and extraliterary features of the literary section of one of the first and most significant private newspapers of Ural Region at the turn of the twentieth century. The conclusions of the article are based on the genre attribution of works published in the newspaper (a poetic legend, feuilleton, soldier’s tale), the correlation of these works with the sociocultural and geographical contexts, and the peculiarities of the authors’ biographies. The article notes an attempt to correlate heterogeneous phenomena in the literary section made by the editorial board of the newspaper. It is important because of the peculiarities of the newspaper’s circulation at that time and the awareness of the geographical position of the Urals as a “middle” region. In the newspaper, there are themes, plots, genres of works of Western European literature and the East, the fate of authors, actively moving to the east (Siberia, the Far East) and to the west, newspaper, and literary texts proper. The editorial policy for Ural was formed along the lines of the coexistence of different esthetic and political views. This was due to the extraliterary peculiarities of the newspaper’s circulation at the turn of the century and the need to attract the attention of readers by any means to provide financial success. In the study, the author applies the genre and motif analysis of literary works. The conclusions are based on a wide literary and illustrative material of the Ural newspaper and other newspapers of Ural Region, the memoirs of contemporaries, and archival materials. The characteristic features of literary critical materials published in the Ural newspaper confirm the features of the editorial policy indicated: an appeal to contemporary authors and authors of the past and to works whose authors had different aesthetic views. As a result, the author of the article concludes about the medial position of the literary department of the Ural newspaper, uniting literary works that are diametrically opposed in sociocultural, aesthetic, and geographical terms.