Invisible Links of the ‘Estate Overtext’

The paper explores theoretical and methodological direction in the research of the literary estate and dacha of the 20–21 centuries and examines one of the issues of their scientific thesaurus — the ratio of the categories “estate text” and “estate overtext”. The definition of the “estate text”, introduced into scientific circulation by V. G. Shchukin in the 1990s, is considered by analogy with the “Petersburg text” by V. N. Toporov, which is based on the text-forming myth about Peter I and St. Petersburg. Despite of the V. G. Shchukin's statement about the obligatory presence of the elegiac-idyllic myth of the “noble nest” in the basis of the “estate text” of Russian literature, in the scientific literary practice of the turn of the 21th century, all works developing an estate theme, without exception, including those opposing the myth began to be interpreted as an “estate text”. Soon the concept of “estate overtext” was introduced, combining topics and mythopoetics into a single series of works about the estate of the 18–21 centuries. The actual synonymy of the terms “estate text” and “estate overtext” generated the question of the redundancy of the latter. However, the study suggests to preserve this term by filling it with semantics relevant to the new quality of the “estate” literature of the 20 and the beginning of the 21th century, referring either to a reformatted in new socio-cultural conditions, or to an absent estate. The categories of “estate habitus”, “estateness” and “crypto-estate mythology” become the tools for analyzing of the “estate overtext” in its new understanding.