“The Beauty Trap” in Artistic Anthropology of A. Ostrovsky
https://doi.org/10.18384/2310-7278-2023-2-56-65
Abstract
Aim. The central task of the paper is to analyze the dynamics of the development of the concept of beauty in A. N. Ostrovsky’s plays, considering its genesis and development specifics in the context of the playwright’s artistic anthropology. We also reveal the contradictions and dramatic conflicts caused by beauty as a defining characteristic of a character.
Methodology. The analysis is based on the principles of literary anthropology, which implies consideration of the writer’s artistic world in the aspect of the concept of a person, which is formed in it. The analysis of the concept of beauty involves addressing the problems of physical and spiritual principles in a person, the correlation of conditionality and freedom, and natural and social principles. The context of the analysis is the concept of beauty, which took shape in the Russian literature and journalism of Ostrovsky’s epoch, from N. G. Chernyshevsky to V. S. Solovyov.
Results. The undertaken analysis made it possible to identify and consider the motive “the fate of beauty” in Ostrovsky’s plays of different periods. On its basis, a typology of characters is proposed, and the main differences between the images of “beauty” and “handsome” in the writer’s dramaturgy are revealed in terms of the ratio of absolute and relative principles, substantially and socially conditioned, opposing the surrounding world or conventionally associated with it.
Research implications. The results of the study can form the basis for considering the aesthetics of the playwright Ostrovsky, as well as for studying the concepts of “beauty” / “handsome” in the works of writers – his contemporaries, in Russian dramaturgy of the second half of the 19th century.
About the Author
T. A. Alpatova
State University of Education
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Tatiana A. Alpatova – Dr. Sci. (Philological Sciences), Professor, Department of Russian Classical Literature
ul. Very Voloshinoi 24, Mytishchi 141014, Moscow Region
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