Kulakova A.I.

Home and road as topoi in the plot structure of V. G. Korolenko’s story Sokolinets. Pp. 113–119.

UDC 821.161.1-32.09″18″

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.86.1.012

 

Abstract. The study of the topoi of home and road actualizes the most important spiritual and moral meanings in Russian literature. The analysis of the story is made with consideration of the situations of the hero’s trial, who in his early youth leaves his parental home and chooses a life of wandering, leading him from a protected place into the space of uncertainty and danger. The article shows that the topos of the road in the artistic structure of the story is opposed to the home, and the mortal semantics of the topos of the yurta (teepee tent in Russian North) allows us to identify the opposition between life and death in the story’s poetic world and draw a conclusion: the yurta is perceived by the narrator as an anti-house – “an alien, devilish space, a place of temporary death” (Yu. M. Lotman). A special place in the plot structure belongs to the symbolic image of fire, which is directly related to a victory over the forces of evil and is a sign of the protagonist’s personal space. The article shows that the path of difficulties and dangers that Sokolinets as the hero walks on develops from the topoi of the road and contributes to personal formation and change of the hero’s social status. And yet the inhabited topos remains alien to him, the uniform settled life causes unrest, while the open space of the road remains attractive and tempting. It is concluded that Korolenko continues the Russian literary tradition: the home and the road in his story are semantically opposed but interrelated topoi.

 

Keywords: hero, home, road, oppositions life vs. death, native vs. foreign, V. G. Korolenko, space, Sokolinets, path.

 

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