Paraphrasis and the establishment of the new Russian literature (to the problem statement)

The paper states the hypothesis, according to which the formation and establishment of the new Russian literature does not occur as a result of a unidirectional but a bi-directional cultural impact on the formation of the original new Russian literature. Medieval genre forms well known in Russia (hagiographies, pilgrimages, etc.), by no means complete their functioning under the conditions of a “new” Europeanization (there was never a complete cultural isolation of Russian culture), but also, first, continue to exist, along with new genres, and, second, have an influence on the new Russian literature itself, the role of which is still largely underestimated. The concept of paraphrasis, which was previously attributed primarily only to a particular episode, although important in the historical-literary sense, are now generalized. This term quite successfully conveys not only the “transpositions” of a local fragment of the Christian tradition, which historically has an Old Testament origin (Psalter), but also the “translation” of the existing Orthodox cultural model as such into the “language” of the New Time, as well as the parallel “translation” of the new European cultural forms into the emerging Russian literature. Literature material (Cantemir, Trediakovsky, Radishchev, Krylov, and other) illustrates this hypothesis.