The voice of a terrorist : how literary archetype of a terrorist revolutionary changed through time in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Russian literature adapted to new reality in the second half of the nineteenth century after the first assassinations which turned attention of the public to newly emerging phenomenon of individual political terrorism. The neccessity to grasp the controversial theme of political murder brought many authors to the representation of a terrorist act and its main agent – a terrorist revolutionary. The way the terrorist revolutionary was treated in literature developed through times. This paper deals with different kinds of representation of a literary character of the terrorist revolutionary that either supported or disrupted the overall myth about the terrorist. The language of the depiction the author used to present the character of the terrorist revolutionary to a reader changed with every written novel, short story or a poem dedicated to this theme. The change can be observed in the changing archetypes used with respect to the character of the terrorist that implied either positive or negative conotations and hence contributed to further development of the myth. Works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Boris Savinkov, Leonid Andreyev and many others who contributed to the development of the myth in the 19th and 20th century will be analyzed from the point of view of different means of expression that created the particular archetype of a terrorist revolutionary in literature. |
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