“THE TALE” AND “THE CASE OF IGOR’S CAMPAIGN” (RUSSIA INSIDE OUT IN THE NOVEL BY HOLM VAN ZAICHIK)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the literary reception of Th e Tale of Igor’s Campaign, which can undoubtedly be called a precedent text of Russian culture. The recognition of individual fragments of the record used in speech and texts of various genres is high. Th e unparalleled significance of the “Igor Tale” developed gradually, under the influence of many factors. During the 19th century, there was a kind of intermedial field of influence of the Old Russian work, manifested primarily in a variety of lyric poetry responses. In prose, the precedent of the “Igor Tale” gains strength only in the 20th century, largely under the influence of scientific publications. A certain canonization of the meanings of the work made it impossible or even unacceptable to reduce them to ironic reading until recently. However, at the very beginning of the 21st century, in the context of postmodernism, there was evidence of a departure from the tradition of searching for the sublime and timeless in the “Word”. Holm van Zaichik’s novel “Th e Case of Igor’s Campaign” (2001) is based on a travestied demonstration of the whole complex of ideas about the “Igor Tale”. It is contrasted with well-known responses in the 19th-20th-century literature. Researchers of the modern literary process find it difficult to determine the genre of the novel, in which there are features of fiction, detective and even dystopia. One way or another, all these components belong to the genre forms that are most in demand today among the mass reader, which suggests a completely new stage of reception of the ancient Russian monument in contemporary literature.