THE MOTIF OF “NOBLE ROBBERY” IN SHEVCHENKO’S STORY “THE CONVICT” IN COMPARISON WITH THE NOVELLA “MICHAEL KOHLHAAS” BY HEINRICH VON KLEIST AND THE NOVEL “JEAN SBOGAR” BY CHARLES NODIER

The paper develops comparative studies of Shevchenko’s story “The Convict” (“Varnak”) in a typological series with Western European works about the ‘noble robber’, namely in comparison with the novella “Michael Kohlhaas” by Heinrich von Kleist and the novel “Jean Sbogar” by Charles Nodier. Tere is no mention of these writers in Shevchenko‘s heritage; neither of the works had been translated into Russian during his lifetime, although he could get limited information about the authors from literary periodicals of the time. Accordingly, a comparative-typological approach is used in the analysis of texts. Several coincidences and parallels have been traced, mainly due to the elaboration of traditional robbery themes in the works. At the same time, the comparison of the story with other works made it possible to illustrate the degree of originality in Shevchenko‘s interpretation of the image of the ‘noble robber’ in the middle of the 19th century. The story “The Convict” is permeated by Christian ideas of forgiveness and redemption, uncharacteristic for Kleist and Nodier. In addition, Kyrylo does not fit entirely into the established scheme of the ‘noble robber’, although the work follows the main structural elements of such a story. In this work, Shevchenko distanced himself from the common robber novels, well known to him and his readers. Feeling, probably, certain obsolescence of the robbery literary tradition, he used it as a material for elaborating the character of the serf intellectual, and combined it, in turn, with his crosscutting theme of seducing a slave girl. The narrator exposed the literary motive of the ‘noble robbery’ subordinating it to the leading theme of the repentant sinner. Against the back-ground of Kleist’s and Nodier’s works, Shevchenko’s slightly belated story is characterized by its natural rootedness in the social circumstances of the contemporary Russian Empire and the life of the Ukrainian countryside, the unpretentious style of the depicted episodes, and a radically different outcome of the conflict.