Dramaturgy of Leonid Andreyev in the context of the European literary process: analysis of domestic research

The article makes an attempt to systematize the domestic studies of the dramaturgy of the outstanding writer of the Silver Age period Leonid Andreyev in which his plays are considered in the context of the European literary process and are associated with European and worldwide trends in art, especially expressionist ones. Leonid Andreyev was one of those writers who ‘groped’ the way of expressionism through his world view and creative work. Not formally being an expressionist, organizationally, he became the precursor of this phenomenon in Russian and European literature and theatre. Researchers are increasingly interested in the diversity of views on the work of the playwright and ‘multi-frontal examination’ of the life of Leonid Andreyev’s plays in a foreign cultural environment. This article provides a detailed analysis of the Soviet and Russian literary studies of the place of Leonid Andreyev’s oeuvre in the literary process of Europe in different periods of the perception of his work: articles of Konstantin Dryagin, Ieremiya Ioffe, Osip Mandelstam, which first announced the connection between Leonid Andreyev’s dramatic writing and German expressionism; works of Alexey Grigoriev and Lyudmila Ken, where, despite the sociological and ideological approaches prevailing at that time, one can clearly see the continuity in views on the work of Leonid Andreyev as a phenomenon being a forerunner of expressionism; modern scientific research by Vladimir Smirnov, Natalia Bondareva and Galina Boeva, who dare to draw more direct parallels with the drama of European authors of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. In the article, we attempt to systematize those studies of Russian philologists in which Leonid Andreyev’s dramaturgy is considered in line with European and global trends in art.