The warrior maiden as archetypal character. Book review: Zuseva-Ozkan V.B. The female warrior in Russian modernist literature: image, motifs, plots. Moscow, Indrik Publ., 2021. 712 p

The article offers an analysis of the study by V. Zuseva-Ozkan, dedicated to the archetypal image of warrior maiden in Russian literature of the first two decades of the 20th century, i.e. of the monograph “The Female Warrior in Russian Modernist Literature: Image, Motifs, Plots” (2021). However, in fact, the scope of the research is much wider; it also includes Western European literatures, since the leading figures of Russian Modernism were “fueled” by impulses coming from the Icelandic sagas, the poems of L. Ariosto and T. Tasso, the plays by H. Ibsen, the tales by H.Ch. Andersen’s tales, etc. The author undertakes the comparative historical analysis, establishing links between the characterological features of the studied archetype on “Russian soil” and the characteristics of “female warriors” in foreign literatures. In the theoretical basis of the study, the essence of the warrior maiden type is revealed, a number of methodological criteria are introduced, in accordance with which the selection of texts and the study of warrior heroines that meet the indicated criteria were carried out. A typological classification of plot variants, featuring such heroines, has been put forward. Warrior heroines in the works of the most prominent writers of the era, such as D.S. Merezhkovsky, V.Ya. Bryusov, A.A. Blok, A. Bely, N.S. Gumilyov, M.A. Kuzmin, M.I. Tsvetaeva, E.I. Zamyatin are described, as well as in the works of lesser known female writers, such as N.G. Lvova, S.Ya. Parnok, L.N. Stolitsa, A.A. Barkova, M.E. Levberg. It is significant that V. Zuseva-Ozkan stretches the threads of Modernism into the second decade of the 20th century, examining the development of this archetypal image in the works of E. Zamyatin and A. Barkova.