ON PROSE AS UNDERSTOOD BY MASTERS OF POETRY (A NOVEL)

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of prose as a genre in the early 19th century, as a creative response to the dual character of contemporary social events. It considers the antithesis of art and reality, and how the latter’s social dimension came to be replaced by an aesthetic one. A new type of prose genre emerges here - the historical novel. The author also looks at the inner world of the individual in Goethe and Pushkin as a reflection of the world around them, and at narrative structure: the hero’s image as it develops through the action, and the renewal of the genre’s artistic devices through poetic elements. Finally, it considers how the retention - and overcoming - of rhetorical convention reveals the author’s ideological stance.