THE DEVELOPMENT OF POETICS OF A SHORT STORY GENRE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE LATE XX – EARLY XXI CENTURIES

Abstract

The revelation of general regularities of world literary process and national specificity of certain literatures at the modern stage under conditions of their interaction on the level of development of poetics genre is one of the fundamental tasks of world comparative studies. The necessity of scientific analysis of evolution of a modern short story in Russian literature as a genre reflecting general regularities of literature development and state of culture is conditioned by tendencies of logical comprehension of development of world literature. Fragmentariness and brevity (and this is one of the main features of a short story) become a specificity of reality in the late XX – early XXI centuries, which are not reflected with distinct connections in bigger epic genres. And only a short story could fix common contours of modern life, idea, «seed» of a character as it is in its competence to work with such splintered, sketched material. Some conclusions concerning a short story became axiomatic that allows taking them as granted. However, on the agenda the problem of revealing the most substantial aspects of genre evolution of small prose in Russian literature is still remaining. The present article is devoted to the investigation of the phenomenon of a short story in Russian literature of the late XX – early XXI centuries in the process of substantiating a complete picture of short story development in content and formal aspects of genre poetics. The object of research covers the short stories of Russian writers published in the periodicals during last decade of the XX century and first decade of the XXI century[1].