Historical Prose Research Articles

The problem of national self-identification of the characters from American alternate historical prose

The problem of national self-identification of the characters from American alternate historical prose

ИЗ НАБЛЮДЕНИЙ НАД РИТМОМ ПРОЗЫ А. Н. ТОЛСТОГО

The article deals with the specifics of the rhythmic organization of A.N.Tolstoy›s prose. The rhythm of prose is defined as a repetitive alternation of elements in a narrative system. Such elements include large blocks: a dynamic depiction of the actions of characters, static descriptions (landscape, portrait, author›s digression), insertion elements (text within the text). A.N.Tolstoy possessed a holistic perception of the space-time continuum of human existence. At the same time, we must take into account the dependence of the tempo of the work on the literary genre chosen by the author, on its stylistic nature. Short stories, novellas and novels by A.N.Tolstoy can be divided into three genre and style categories: 1) manor prose; 2) adventurous and fantasy prose; 3) historical prose. The specificity of these artistic models determined many features of the poetics of these works, including influencing the organization of the narrative rhythm. The rhythm of manor prose tends to slow down. Adventurous prose has a completely different rhythm of plot unfolding. A series of adventures aimed at achieving cherished goals is always characterized by a special rapidity and unpredictability of transitions. The rhythm of historical prose is determined by contrasts in the perception of time, on the one hand, by active reformers, and, on the other hand, by mossy conservatives. In all cases, rhythmic shifts affect both tiers of the story system: 1) the depicted series of events (the scope of the characters› actions); 2) the scope of the events of the story (the subject level). The article deals with the issues of the technique of embodying rhythmic shifts (the role of pauses, the introduction of the same type of syntactic constructions, the discrepancy of different rhythms, deviations from logic).

Арт. Феличе. Воспоминания актрисы (Людмила Андреевна Ямщикова-Дмитриева: к 130-летию со дня рождения)

We dedicate the publication of a fragment of the fictionalized autobiography of Lyudmila Andreevna Yamshchikova-Dmitrieva (1893‒1978), “Aktrisa” (“The Actress”), to her memory and her 130th anniversary. Another forgotten name that did not continue the ancestral branch of its famous ancestors Rokotov and Tolstoy. She left no descendants, was a dramatic actress and writer, made a certain contribution to Russian historical prose for young people in the first half of the 20th century and memorably served the theater, playing the main roles in plays of classical and modern repertoire. According to the memoirs of the playwright V.S. Rozov, who personally knew Lyudmila Andreevna and her mother, Margarita Vladimirovna Yamshchikova (1872‒1959), known in literature under the pseudonym Al. Altaev, Lyudmila shone on the provincial stage for about thirty years, quietly, imperceptibly died within the walls of the Leningrad House of Veterans of the Scene, named after her unforgettable teacher M.G. Savina. In literature, Lyudmila Andreevna performed under the pseudonym Art. Felice: that was the name of the “Ovod” (“Gadfly”) in the novel of the same name by E. Voynich, wrote books from the history of England, Italy, and the Netherlands, small biographies for children about great scientists, inventors, was a co-author of her mother in several works. The manuscript “Aktrisa” (“The Actress”), a fragment of which is offered to readers, has two copies. They are kept in the Altaev Memorial Fund (Coll. 1370) and in the fund of the Altaev Literary Memorial Museum, which is located in the village of Lositsy in the Plyussky district of the Pskov region, in the former Log estate. Lyudmila Yamshchikova herself did not intend for the manuscript “The Actress” to be published, but for those who are engaged in the history of the Russian provincial theater, this material will be very useful both in historical and research terms.

Obrazy władców i szlachty polskiej w prozie historycznej Romana Iwanyczuka

The topic of the article is the image of Polish kings and nobility in Roman Iwanyczuk’s historical prose. The analysis was conducted on the basis of three works written at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. They are only a fragment of the rich literary heritage ofthe famous Ukrainian novelist. Ciemnoczerwone wino (Черлене вино) takes the reader to the 15th century, to Galicia‑Volhynia, which was threatened with polonization. Manuskrypt z ulicy Ruskiej (Манускрипт з вулиці Руської) shows the origin of the idea of the liberation war, the future Chmielnicki Uprising, in Lviv at the turn of the 16th and 18th century. The novel Woda z kamienia (Вода з каменю) presents the beginnings of the Ukrainian national revival in Galicia and the history of the Ruthenian Trinity, with its leader Markian Szaszkewicz. The cyclicality and connections between novels, gives Iwanyczuk’s work spatiotemporal continuity, which encompasses, above all, historical events and figures. The analyzed works present a clearly negative image of the representatives of Polish society, which results from the stereotypical approach to the perception of a Pole in the 20th century Ukrainian literature. Polish rulers and nobility are portrayed through the prism of Polish‑Ukrainian relations at socio‑political, religious and ideological level.

O literackich losach opowieści o bitwie na Kosowym Polu i próbie przybliżenia jej polskim czytelnikom dziecięcym

This article is devoted to the Polish edition of a collection of Serbian folk songs, which was published in 1962 by the Polish publishing house Nasza Księgarnia under the title Bitwa na Kosowym Polu (The Battle of Kosovo). It is the first and only complete edition of the songs of the Kosovo cycle in Polish, translated for young readers by Zygmunt Stoberski, an outstanding translator and promoter of Serbian literature in Poland. The article is divided into several parts. In the first one, attention is focused on the battle itself, which took place in 1389, the folk songs commemorating this event and the importance of the Kosovo myth. In the second part, the focus is on the fascination with the Serbian Middle Ages in Serbian literature for children and youth. In the following parts, Polish‑Serbian literary contacts after World War II and the history of translations of texts for children, the translation and popularization activities of Zygmunt Stoberski, and the reception of Serbian folk song in Poland were reviewed. The main purpose of the article was to show how the translator and the publishing house Nasza Księgarnia adapted the Serbian epic to the perceptual abilities of young readers. It also shows how Bitwa na Kosowym Polu can be seen against the background of Polish historical prose for children, which was written in the 1950s and 1960s.

Український історичний роман: шляхи становлення та розвитку

The experience accumulated by the art of words never goes away. At a certain stage of literary development, it can be exhausted to a certain extent, only to be revived in a new context in a modified form. The relevance of the study of historical prose, in particular its ways of formation and development, specificity, themes, is quite natural, since works about the national past allow the reader to consciously or sporadically immerse himself in the meaning of life realities, in particular to understand the moral and ethical ideals of the Ukrainian people, the physical and spiritual endurance of the participants in the national liberation struggle, and the deep human values that are often much more expressive and accurate in historical prose than in sociological and historical research. The fiction model of the heroic past serves to shape historical thinking, to deepen an individual’s understanding of his or her own place in society, and to help individuals find ways to self-knowledge and self-affirmation. The article traces the genesis and main stages of formation of the Ukrainian historical novel, starting with the novel «Zynovii Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Istorychna kartyna podii, kharakteriv, i zvychaiv XVII stolittia v Malorosii (Zynoviy Bohdan Khmelnytsky. A Historical Picture of Events, Characters, and Customs of the Seventeenth Century in Little Russia)» by Pavlo Biletsky-Nosenko — through the novel «Chorna rada. Khronika 1663 roku (Black Council. The Chronicle of 1663)» — to contemporary works about the past by Pavlo Zahrebelnyi, Roman Ivanychuk, Valerii Shevchuk, Yurii Mushketyk and others. The specifics of historical novel prose are elucidated, the essence of the concepts of «historical novel» and «artistic and historical truth» is revealed, the role of fictional conjecture and fiction is determined. The article summarises the views of domestic researchers of historical prose on its typology.

A poetic monument to the Moravian awakening movement in Livonia

ABSTRACT A poem by the Pietist pastor of St Jacob’s Church in Riga, Friedrich Bernhard Blaufuß (1697–1756), rediscovered in the State Historical Archives of Latvia and later in the Herrnhut Moravian Archives, has until now been absent from the history of culture and literature in Latvia. Blaufuß’ works also include several other poems in German and Latvian. Blaufuß authored the first history of the Latvian people written in Latvian and meant for the Latvian reader, Vidzemes stāsti (Livonian Histories). His proximity to Livonian Moravian circles has previously been underestimated. This article presents and contextualizes his poem Liefländisches Denkmal (Livonian Monument) in relation to Blaufuß’ historical prose work and Kristijonas Donelaitis’ poetic monument ‘Metai’ (The Seasons).

The emotional potential of the lexeme "heart" in the artistic discourse of Bohdan Lepky

The article analyzes the expressive potential of the lexeme heart as a representative of human emotions and feelings in the artistic discourse of Bohdan Lepkyі. Based on the material of the writer’s historical prose, it was found that his language creation is characterized by the wide use of the somatism heart to objectify the psycho-emotional state of the characters. In the author’s texts, there are descriptions of the actions and movements of the heart as human reactions to emotional stimuli with the help of predicates of beating, blows, rhythmic and non-rhythmic movements, compression, disintegration, in combination with which the human heart is associated with the hidden feelings and emotions of the characters. The human heart in the works of Bohdan Lepkyі is endowed with the ability to speak or remain silent, contemplate and listen, prophesy and predict, etc. Linguistic markers of such signs of the heart are metaphors that convey various situations of excitement and emotional experience. The writer widely uses emotional phraseology with the heart component, in which the phraseologisation of emotions and feelings is achieved through personification and metaphorical reinterpretation of the heart as the emotional basis of a person. In the author’s descriptions, the verb type of metaphor prevails, since verbs most dynamically convey a person’s psychological state or reaction to emotional stimuli. Along with common language phraseology, the write’s works contain individual and authorial stable verbal expressions that reveal the specifics of depicting the image of the heart. The somatism heart in the language of B. Lepkyі’s works is also defined by metaphorical epithets that explain adjectives and record the writer’s ideas about human moral and ethical values, characterizing the characters as bearers of certain traits and personal qualities. In the works of the writer, the lexeme heart has a symbolic meaning, it is associated with various feelings, blood and other substances, fire and heat, the linguistic expression of which is conveyed by various metaphors and phraseological units.

The phenomenon of fear in Ukrainian literature for children and youth about the events of the Holodomor of 1932-1933

The article considers the forms of manifestation of fear and the specificity of their representation in Ukrainian works for children and youth about the events of the Holodomor of 1932--1933. Its relevance is emphasized, as the state of threat and the appearance of fear as a basic reaction to it have become the modern realities in Ukraine. The state of research of the issue in Ukrainian literary studies is outlined; the principles of classification of forms, functions, and types of fear are taken into account. It is determined that works about the Holodomor take an important place in the sphere of historical prose, which accumulates a complex of historical knowledge, becomes an important factor in the formation of the national identity of the personality. While analyzing the short stories "Kandor" by Y. Zbanatskyi, "Bevka" by M. Mahera, "Velykyi Zlochyn Malenkoho Mykhasia" (Great Crime of Little Mykhas) by Oleksa Kobets, "Chorna Khustka" (Black Shawl) by M. Ponedilok, "Skrynia" (Chest) by K. Yehorushkina, and the story "Try Skhodynky Holodomoru" (Three Steps of the Holodomor) by E. Zarzhytska, it has been found out that the dominant type of fear in the artistic sphere of the works is fear for physical existence, fear of hunger (to be hungry, to see a hungry person, to see a person who died of hunger). It is determined that in Ukrainian fiction on the Holodomor theme real fears (fear of power, fear of being left at home alone, fear of the dark, fear of death, fear of a particular person, fear of being punished) and metaphysical ones (horror, anxiety) are represented by techniques of psychological analysis, reproduction of states of the nature, metaphors, symbols which lay stress on the writer's attitude and style.

Historical Novels by B. Okudzhava: Some Aspects of Artistic Anthropology

The subject of the study in the article is literary anthropology, which is reflected in the historical prose of B. Okudzhava. The purpose of the analysis is to study some aspects of the literary anthropology of B. Okudzhava's historical novels. The
 methodology of the research is determined by the nature of the tasks set and is based on the historical-literary, socio-cultural method, as well as a holistic analysis of the work of art.
 The conclusions of the research characterize some principles of literary anthropology of B. Okudzhava: 1) for B. Okudzhava, the main carrier and measure of spiritual values is the Russian intelligentsia, while history in his novels acts as a con-
 text for moral verification of personality; 2) one of the most important ontological constants of human existence for B. Okudzhava is hope, invisibly present in life; 3) the human being of B. Okudzhava is characterized by ideas about conditionality,
 predestination and the inevitability of events and actions; 4) through all the novels of B. Okudzhava's leitmotif is the idea that there is no independent human freedom outside of history, and significant historical events cannot remain external even to an
 unwitting witness to them; 5) B. Okudzhava's spiritual and moral being of a person is defined by responsibility, interpreted as a person's awareness of his or her place in history and society, as well as the ability of a person to be responsible for his or
 her actions and feel involved in the events taking place.
 The results of the research conducted in this article can be used in the study of B. Okudzhava's creativity and historical prose of the second half of the XX century.
 The main conclusions can be used in the preparation of lecture courses.

Integration of time and space in historical prose

The article comprehensively analyzes that time and space are a set of mobile concepts. In historical novels, the essence of the connection between space and time is highlighted. A deep analysis of the specifics of the originality of the relationship of space and time in historical works has been carried out. Since the very nature of the work is formed into a historical event, the relationship between space and time is self-organized here. In describing and depicting the historical situation in the established chronology, the author proposes a peculiar model. For example, in the historiography of Genghis Khan, a broad commentary on the era is given. The author goes beyond the time and space outlined by him, describes the period before the birth of Genghis Khan, analyzes and completes the details, comparing the time in the story with the period of major events. At the same time, all types of models of space and time are intertwined in the work. Since the historical novel is built mainly on truthful data, documentary, consistent materials, the originality of the spatial, temporal connection is emphasized here. The article seeks concreteness, consistency, convergence of the author between artistic time and real time, differentiation of dynamic events, establishment of relations of the past, present and future.       Keywords: space, time, relativistic concept, habitat, parent settlement &nbsp

Means of forming the imperial colonial narrative in the M. Karamzin’s story “Marfa-posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novogorod”

The relevance of the study is determined by the need for post-colonial studies of Russian literature, in particular the historical prose by Mykola Karamzin, who was one of the first creators of the imperial colonial narrative in fiction. His story “Marfa-Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novogorod” has not yet been the object of such a study, the problem of the founding of Russian colonial policy on the pages of this literary work has not been covered in literary studies. Consideration of this issue is the goal of this research. In the comparative aspect, the text of Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” in its part devoted to the Novogorod events of the 15th century is included to the analysis. The methodology of postcolonial studies and narratological analysis was used to implement the research objectives. As a result of the study, the following means of forming the imperial colonial narrative in the story were determined: the evaluative author’s words, speeches of historical characters-politicians, rhetorical techniques, and the method of depicting events and their participants. The position of the author-narrator is aimed at supporting the conquering policy of the Moscow principality, the annexation of Novogorod is justified by the “higher” goals of creating a powerful empire and is presented as an objective historical necessity. The imperial colonial discourse is vividly illustrated by the speech of the Moscow prince’s ambassador, which is a model of political demagogy, the use of manipulative technologies, and the intimidation of citizens. The two-valued connotation of Marfa’s image contributes to establishing the author’s necessary accents. On the one hand there is heroization, a comparison with Cato, and on the other is a conscious simplification of the motives of Marfa’s struggle as a leader of the people’s resistance. Obviously, the writer creates a certain field of mistrust towards the heroine by emphasizing her manipulation of the feelings of the crowd as a good orator. Thanks to the motives of the useless sacrifice of Marfa and the people of Novgorod, prophecy, “the will of Providence”, Karamzin forces the reader to think about the inevitability of the fall of the Novgorod Republic. The prospects of the research are the re-reading of Russian imperial literature in the context of post-colonial studies, further debunking the means of myth-making and colonial narrative in the corpus of its texts of different periods.

Роман Константина Сергиенко «Ксения»: контексты прочтения

Sergienko’s novel “Kseniaˮ (“Ксенияˮ), which addresses the events of the Time of Troubles, is considered in such interrelated contexts as the traditions of European and Russian historical prose, the preceding versions of the plot about False Dmitry, the work of the writer and his contemporaries. These readings of the book do not cancel its in-text analysis. The traditional plot-forming motives of the historical novel, assimilated and developed in “Ksenia”, include the wanderings and fate of a private person in a crisis era. In accordance with this tradition, the fictional character Mikhail Turenev is equated in the book with the real figures of that era. He, like Princess Ksenia, is brought to the epilogue by the author. The central place of the heroine in the system of characters is emphasized by both the title of the book and the ring composition – from the birth of Ksenia and naming her by this name to the announcement by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky of the name of his daughter in honor of Princess Ksenia. According to the place and role in the development of the plot, the Impostor is comparable to Turenev and Ksenia, and not with Shuisky, like Sumarokov, not with Boris Godunov, as in Pushkin’s tragedy. The illusory presence of False Dmitry in history is enhanced by his disorder, reverse gradation, and other techniques. The influence of Pushkin’s tragedy is noticeable, in particular, in the end-to-end character Pronka: he has the same role at the end of the book as the fool in “Boris Godunovˮ – to be the “voice of the peopleˮ. The love triangle formed by Ksenia, the antipodes Turenev and False Dmitry, resembles the arrangement of their respective characters in “Dimitri the Impostor” (“Димитрий Самозванецˮ), “The Captain’s Daughterˮ (“Капитанская дочкаˮ), “Prince Serebryanyˮ (“Князь Серебряныйˮ). The complex of plot-forming motives in the novel, which is stable in historical novelistics and in Sergienko’s work, is complicated by original motives. These are the motives of impracticable plans, the “crossingˮ of the paths of the heroes as manifestations of the determinism they realize, the motives of love and creativity. Mutual love, creation, participation in the defense of the Fatherland overcomes the destructive element of life, the unrealization of plans and the harmony sought by the heroes of the novel is achieved. Another motif is correlated with these motives – peace in different meanings, especially in its understanding as balance in nature, which should be the basis of a harmonious human existence in the world. The high degree of rapprochement between the writer and his protagonists reminds of the works of Sergienko’s contemporaries, whose heroes accept an absurd reality and find the strength to resist it. In the novel “Kseniaˮ, starting from previous works about the Russian crisis of the early 17th century and taking into account the traditions of historical prose and knowledge about the catastrophic experience of the 20th century, the writer offers his view on the cause-and-effect relationships of the events of the Time of Troubles.

Anti-colonial pathos of Mykola Lazorskyi’s prose

Literature of Ukrainian diaspora is a very rich and diverse phenomenon needing objective, systematic and complete scientific consideration. The purpose of the article is to analyze anti-colonial pathos in the prose of the original Ukrainian writer from Australia Mykola Lazorskyi whose works are visible against the background of the native and foreign literary process of the 20th century and deserve scientific attention. The research is based on the general methods of analysis, synthesis, observation, selection and systematization of the material. The elements of the following methods are used in the article: cultural and historical (helps to highlight the special features of representation of Ukrainian national culture against the background of the anti-colonial struggle of different historical epochs in creative works of Mykola Lazorskyi), hermeneutic (ensures fluent and open interpretation of texts keeping perspective for new explanations), aesthetic (allows analyzing each text as a phenomenon of literature and art), intertextual (links between the writer’s prose and Ukrainian literature, foreign literary and folklore tradition). The works of Mykola Lazorskyi testify that he had delicate involvement into the past historical epochs and was interested in the fates of famous and little known figures who were engaged in the anti-colonial struggle of Ukrainians and served as a model for imitation in the realm of the national resistance and preservation of ethnic identity and national traditions. Mykola Lazorskyi’s prose enriches and widens our idea about the native and the world anti-colonial literature. The writer deals with the problem of multi-century aspiration of our ancestors to exist as a separate nation and gain a victory over aggressive neighbors. The author describes the history of the native land and the anti-colonial struggle of other nations. Russia is a symbol of very disgust and ominous forms of the colonialism in the writer’s works. Mykola Lazorskyi’s anti-colonial historical prose also sounds topically in our days when the Moscow horde wishes to destroy Ukraine and to conquer other European countries. These anti-colonial texts ring as a strict sentence to the last imperial forces on the planet. In perspective it is advisable to turn to Mykola Lazorskyi’s anti-colonial historical prose in comparison with the works of modern writers who represent anti-colonial discourse in Ukrainian and foreign literature of the early 21th century.

LITERATURE OF EMIGRATION. EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICAL PROSE IN THE FIELD OF FOREIGN CULTURE

Historical novel, as a special genre formation born of Romanticism, has become an artistic tool for the reproduction of the past, its discovery and invention. Historical prose is the literary space where two worldview narrative strategies intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide: these are history that (in its academic sense) seeks to recreate the ‘true past’, and literature, which is a particular representation and development of the world. Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration appears as a fairly integral literary and aesthetic phenomenon during two interwar decades of the 20th century and ends at the border of the 1990s — aft er Ukraine gained its independence. For nations that lost their statehood, the return of the past, its glorification is an important means of forming national identity and self-consciousness. The historical novel of the Ukrainian emigration is a relentless attempt to root its next generations in the national tradition of collective memory.
 In general, for societies in which the state tradition has been interrupted, historical prose can be an essential factor in restoring / maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past into modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving national traditions. The historical prose of the Ukrainian emigration was actually focused on these aims, taking responsibility for the nationalist and philosophic perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future. The aspiration and experience of Ukrainian emigration in other countries carries a number of tasks that it set for itself. Th ese were, in particular, the preservation of the native language, culture, and creative activity, including historical prose on the themes prohibited in the mainland literature, the formation of the strategy of collective memory through historical prose.

Книга очерков и исторический роман И. И. Винокурова-Тагуса: модусы художественности

The aim of our study is to identify the aesthetic dominants and traditions of historical narrative in the book of essays and the historical novel “Love in the Yaranga” by I. I. Vinokurov-Tagus. The scientific novelty lies in the introduction of the Evenk novelist’s work into the research field and the description of the artistic mode of national historical prose. The results of the study are formulated in the following theses: the book “Deer Paths to Diamond Deposits”, written in the genre of memoirs, was a prologue to the historical novel by I. I. Vinokurov-Tagus. The genre-typological features, main motives, typical characters are revealed in the novel “Love in the Yaranga”. The combination of realistic and romantic principles of representation in prose allowed I. I. Vinokurov-Tagus to raise the theme of national self-consciousness at a new level and continue the traditions of the historical prose of the peoples of the North.

The Pedagogy of Bafflement: Bernard Bailyn's History 2910, Fall 1996

The Pedagogy of Bafflement: Bernard Bailyn's History 2910, Fall 1996

MEMORY, HISTORICAL PROSE AND FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Historical prose as a component of national literature is an essential part of the cultural life of modern nations. One of its tasks is to form the cultural memory of large groups that create national communities, structure the past and preserve its integrity and uniqueness.
 The historical prose of Ukrainian emigration eloquently demonstrates mutual projections of memory and the formation of national conscience and identity. The prose of emigration as an exile can serve as a relief and expressive evidence of the formation and interpenetration of the main ideas and concepts, ideological and aesthetic figurative paradigm, formed on the border of memory, history, and literature. This is how historical prose is seen as a purposeful policy of memory.
 For societies where the state tradition was interrupted, historical prose can be considered an important factor in restoring/maintaining national memory, as well as a means of creating national myths, projecting the past on the modern problems of a stateless nation, and preserving the national traditions.
 Historical prose of Ukrainian emigration had these tasks in mind, taking responsibility for the national philosophical perspective rooted in the past in order to preserve and increase it in the future. The idea of self-discovery through one’s own history is, in particular, an important element in the existence of Ukrainian emigration: in this case, we talk about national self-knowledge in a community that tries to preserve its national identity and fix it not only in oral tradition but also in scholarly historical research and historical prose.
 Historical fiction of the 20th-century Ukrainian emigration was a means of discovering the sources of traditions in the past that directly influences modernity, and an attempt to build a historiosophical literary model that would reveal the forgotten past, show the causes of current problems, and point out the way to future.

HATHI 1M: Introducing a Million Page Historical Prose Dataset in English from the Hathi Trust

We present a new dataset built on prior work consisting of 1,671,370 randomly sampled pages of English-language prose roughly divided between modes of fictional and non-fictional writing and published between the years 1800 and 2000. In addition to focusing on the “page’’ as the basic bibliographic unit, our work employs a single predictive model for the historical period under consideration in contrast to prior work. Besides publication metadata, we also provide an enriched feature set of 107 features including part-of-speech tags, sentiment scores, word supersenses and more. Our data is designed to give researchers in the digital humanities large yet portable random samples of historical writing across two foundational modes of English prose writing. We present initial insights into transformations of linguistic patterns across this historical period using our enriched features as possible pointers to future work. The data can be accessed at <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HAKKUA" target="_blank"><em>https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HAKKUA</em></a>.

Прием мгновенного перемещения во времени в повестях Валентина Катаева «Маленькая железная дверь в стене» и Бориса Рахманина «Часы без стрелок»

The aim of the study is to determine the function of the “instantaneous transfer into another time” technique in historical prose, which is attained by identifying the literary argumentation of its application by writers who use fundamentally different historical material and achieve similar but not tautological results. Having analysed this technique in conjunction with the semantics of the title and the vector chosen by the authors in order to achieve historical accuracy, the researcher has found that for V. Kataev, referring to names of historical figures and creating an image of poetic memories form the same genre priorities, while the image of a clock without hands, reflected in the title of B. Rakhmanin’s novella, prompts him to give his own genre definition - “it is both a fairy tale and a true story”. Scientific novelty of the study lies in providing insight into these specific genre priorities.