Typology of the oppositionist in the Russian drama of the 19th century: Chatsky – Samozvanets – Zhadov

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide an updated assessment of the hero-reasoner and oppositionist of the Russian drama of the 19th century. To this end, three vivid and evolutionarily significant images are examined, taken in terms of their ideological content and poetics: Chatsky (Woe from Wit by A. S. Griboyedov), the Impostor (Boris Godunov by A. S. Pushkin) and Zhadov (The Profitable Place of A. N. Ostrovsky). They were created in different genres – high comedy, historical tragedy and a social and household play, but they share a similar author’s intention. Namely, they manifest the active intervention of the individual in the established order, the very possibility of a socially charged, civic act. This clarifies the tradition in displaying forms of rebellion in the Russian literature, as well as the cross-cutting correlation of the characters of the three key Russian plays, previously compared in pairs. The scientific novelty is determined by the sharpened perspective of the chosen problem, the desire to actualize the thematic and characterological connection of the top texts in the perspective of the socio-cultural concepts of the hero-rebel of modern times. Three directions are considered step by step – literary, stylistic, genre, and theatrical, through which the transition of the traditional hero-reasoner into a new quality of social and political oppositionist is visible. The author notes that the vividness of the created images makes them unique and isolated. By the end of the 19th century, the image of the transformative hero, as well as the elevated idea of spiritual resistance, completely disappeared from the minds of playwrights and was even profaned in the subsequent development of the dramatic genre. This literary type of involution is due, however, not to the absence of an object of social criticism, but to a complete change in dramatic poetics. The functions of the hero-reasoner and oppositionist pass into prose and journalism. The heroism and noble impulse of the few protagonists of the Russian drama turned out to be retrospective, but no less valuable for our national spiritual history.