“The Scary House” in the Prose of V. F. Odoyevsky and N. S. Leskov: Transformation of the Gothic Tradition

Aim. To highlight the phenomenon of “Gothic” features in the historical and literary concepts of V. F. Odoevsky and N. S. Leskov by comparing the Gothic elements of the chronotope in the story “The Salamander” (1841) and the story “The Ghost of the Engineering Castle” (1882); a “strange” (“scary”) house is considered as the said chronotope as a result of the transformation of the image of the “Gothic castle” taking into account the life-like literary strategy of the second half of the 19^th century.

Methodology. The analysis presented in this article is based on the principles of historical-genetic and comparative-typological analysis of literary works. The characterization of the text’s key elements, comparable to the traditions of the Gothic novel as a literary-polemic and metatextual phenomenon, is conducted using elements of the structural-semiotic method, as well as elements of cultural semiotics.

Results. Stable elements of the Gothic novel’s poetics persisted in individual works of the mid – to late 19^th century, becoming a “second order” historical and literary reality in the context of the new era. For both V. F. Odoevsky and N. S. Leskov, elements of “fear” and narrative intrigue provide a unique structure, shaping the ideological problem of the “meeting” of two principles: the real and the mystical, the present and the past, the energetic and the devoid of it, the rational and the irrational. Thus, the duality of the worldview, genetically rooted in the Gothic genre tradition, made it possible to use this tradition as the subject of artistic interpretation, incorporated into a complex system of dialogue between author and reader, and, in general, realized the movement toward a philosophical and historical understanding of the 18^th century as a distinctive cultural era, significant for the development of historicism within the ideological system of the 19^th century.

Research implications. The results of the study can be the basis for considering the historical and literary concept of V. F. Odoevsky and N. S. Leskov in general, as well as studying the concept of literary play, the motifs of the Gothic novel in the literature of the second half of the 19^th century.

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