ДОКУМЕНТАЛЬНОСТЬ ТРАВЕЛОГА И СПОСОБЫ ОБОБЩЕНИЯ (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ТВЕРСКОГО ВЕРХНЕВОЛЖЬЯ)
THE DOCUMENTARY CHARACTER OF TRAVELOGUE AND METHODS OF GENERALIZATION (BASED ON THE MATERIALS FROM THE TVER UPPER VOLGA REGION)

Summary/Abstract: The paper explores documentary character as the leading principle for representing the reality in travelogue. The phenomena of travel and travelogue are described in modern literary and cultural studies from the perspective of anthropology. Along with the purely anthropological approach, recent researchers have successfully used the nature-oriented approach developed in the western discourse of ecocriticism. Theoretically, it is obvious that the problem of the documentary character of travelogue, which arises from interaction between humans and space during travels, can be solved by synthesizing these approaches. However, complex usage of the anthropological and spatio-temporal approaches has not become common practice in modern science. The materials of surface and water travels to the Tver Upper Volga Region are used by us as a conceptual base for theoretical conclusions. Through verifying both measure and degree of the documentary character of travelogue with the help of local texts, we reveal reasons for its violation and ways to deliberately cope with it in a particular discourse of travelogue. The objective and subjective restrictions distorting the documentary character of travelogue up to implausibility are considered. It is demonstrated that travelogue authors, guided by the principle of adequate description and subject, consistently violate this principle: they conceptualize the described space in the spirit of time, demythologize its earlier description, and produce new myths. They most frequently compare the described phenomena and facts and apply a generalizing meaning to the commonly known object, which allows them to consider it as a specific type, as well as to include it in various classification models. The paradox of travelogue is disclosed, i.e., that perception of some new phenomenon inevitably involves the establishment of paradigmatic relations of it with the already known material.

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