2014-№4(45) Article 10

T.V. Fedosseyeva, M.V. Goremykina

Utopia and anti-utopia in W.K. Kuchelbecker’s and V.F. Odoyevsky’s prose. P. 90- 107.

UDC 882(09) «18»

The paper deals with the controversial issue of genre characteristics of utopian and an-ti-utopian fiction. It centers on the correlation of utopian and anti-utopian characteristics in romantic writers W.K. Kuchelbecker’s and V.F. Odoyevsky’s literary works. The paper analyz-es and compares W.K. Kuchelbecker’s novels «European Letters» (1820) and «Land of Acephals» (1824) with V.F. Odoyevsky’s novels «4338 AD» (1835) and «The Nameless City» (1839). The paper focuses on similar and different features of the two writers’ worldview. The paper maintains that the novels «European Letters» and «4338 AD», being utopian in charac-ter, depict the future of mankind through the prism of an idealized concept of Russia and fo-cus on the image of a harmoniously developed personality. The novels «Land of Acephals» and «The Nameless City» are, on the contrary, anti-utopian. W.K. Kuchelbecker and V.F. Odoyevsky seem to be convinced that practical realization of utopian ideas is impossible. The research shows the development of utopian and anti-utopian features in Russian romantic literature.

W.K. Kuchelbecker, V.F. Odoyevsky, Russian prose of the 1820s–1830s, author’s worldview, genre characteristics, «Mnemosyne», the image of Russia, literary utopia, rudiments of anti-utopia

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