Features of Shmelev’s zoopoetics are described in the article on the basis of the early stories, such as My Mares, Light Page, and Mary, in which images of animals are analysed in the context of Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Strider by Lev Tolstoy, Kashtanka by Anton Chekhov, The White Poodle and Emerald by Alexander Kuprin, and Dreams of Chang by Ivan Bunin). Shmelev’s zoopoetics is based on the philosophy of life and death, freedom and captivity, and the connection between the natural world and the world of childhood, and is actualized in anthropomorphic images of animals manifested in the texts of the writer in many ways (psychologism, spirituality, and the use of the concepts of “soul”, “destiny”, “love” “morality” and “compassion”). Animals in the stories appear as a certain indicator, because the correlation with them and the attitude to them reveal the other characters – both adults and children.
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No. 2 (2016)
Published: 2016-12-24
10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA
English
Русский
Język Polski