Intertextual analysis: a methodology for a literary periodization of the author's oeuvre (on the example of Christmas stories by N. Leskov)

The article deals with the method of intertextual analysis as a technique for identifying and describing individual artistic stages of creativity based on the material of Christmas stories by N.S. Leskov. The chronological concept of the periodization of the writer’s Yuletide creativity, which we have called intertextual, is proposed. The analysis includes not only literary texts of Leskov’s predecessors and contemporaries, Russian and foreign, but also works of other types of art (iconography, painting, musical works), understood and designated in special works as text. Literary, musical, pictorial works, as well as church hymns and icons were singled out as sources. In accordance with the revealed connections, an attempt has been made to build a conditional intertextual periodization of Yuletide stories. As a result of the analysis of intertextual connections in Leskov’s Yuletide stories, three main stages of the development and evolution of the genre of the Yuletide story in the writer’s work are identified on the basis of dominant intertextual connections. The use of the method of intertextual analysis made it possible to identify and describe individual artistic stages in the development of Leskov Christmas stories, as well as to note their internal integrity, the role of tradition and continuity in the literary process, the originality and complexity of the author’s creative path. The writer not only joins the collective experience, but through his own artistic experiments forms a new level of literary tradition.