Leskov’s Notes o f the Unknown (Zametki neizvestnogo)
Leskov’s Notes o f the Unknown (Zametki neizvestnogo)

Summary/Abstract: The article gives a linguistic and literary analysis of N. S. Leskov’s fiction. The author compares some hitherto unpublished manuscripts related to the church life of the 1819th centuries with the cases and situations described in Zametki neizvestnogo. One of the main ambitions of the author is to reveal the possible correlation between the attributes of N. S. Leskov’s heroes and the Russian cultural traditions of the past. Some original and vivid examples of the speech of specific Russian professions and estates are analyzed as well as linguistic parallels between complicated church language and the writer’s system of stylistic devices are defined. New interlinks between the historic, the linguistic and the literary aspects of the text and, especially, N. S. Leskov’s unusual world as a form of culturally-historically determined consciousness are detected.

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