Anna and Zakhar, or The hero of our time

Abstract

The article analyzes the proposed by the famous literary critic Anna Zhuchkova’s creative evolution research methodology of the artistic style of Zakhar Prilepin. The presented assessment of the writer’s literary work, based on a thorough knowledge of the texts, has an objective chronological form, which allows us to determine the role and significance of Z. Prilepin’s prose more accurately in the literary process of the early 21st century. It is clarified that the analysis of Z. Prilepin’s prose is based on the methodology of biographical research proposed by I.N. Rozanov, Russian formalists (G.O. Vinokur) and rethought in the works of Yu.M. Lotman. A. Zhuchkova updated the genre of “biography of the writer”, the concept of “writer’s reputation” in the dynamics of the historical and literary process of the first decades of the XXI century in Russia. Relevant for postmodern discourse is the analysis of the genesis and dynamics of the concept of “sincerity” in the Russian historical and literary process from Apollon Grigoriev to the theorists of the Commonwealth “The Pass” and Vladimir Pomerantsev’s textbook article “On the sincerity of literature” (1953), the emergence and evolution of “New Sincerity” in Russian literature from D.A. Prigov to D. Vodennikov, problems of restoration of classical romantic discourse, remythologization of the ideals of the “romantics of the revolution”, transformation of the “trench truth” genre in the texts of “new realism” by Z. Prilepin, A. Karasev, D. Gutsko, O. Ermakov, etc.