Literary Local History and the Genre of the Guidebook (B.S. Zemenkov about the Serednikovo Estate)

Abstract

. The article shows the synthesis of literary, local history and art history development of the phenomenon of literary estate in the works of the famous Soviet local historian B.S. Zemenkov of the 1940s – 1960s. Working within the framework of literary local history, an innovative area of research initiated in the 1920s and 1930s by N.P. Antsiferov, the founder of the local-historical method in literary studies, Zemenkov became one of the creators of the genre of the illustrated museum-estate guide, which flourished so much in the USSR in the second half of the 20 th century and has not lost its relevance today. Numerous quotations from the works of Zemenkov introduce for the first time a productive methodology of a specific literary and local history research, which opens up new facets of comprehension of literary works. In the center of the analysis is one of the episodes of literary local lore that previously did not fall into the focus of literary consideration – the image of the Stolypin’s Serednikovo estate near Moscow, associated with the work of M.Y. Lermontov. Zemenkov’s characteristic way of working with the monument is traced: from painstaking study of book and archival materials, through a visit to the memorial site to the creation of articles, illustrations, excursions combined in the genre of a guidebook. The fruitfulness of Zemenkov’s inno vative methodology is due to the enrichment of literary research with interdisciplinary components, the inclusion of a personal-emotional factor, a combination of rational and intuitive approaches.