Paths and crossroads of historical poetics

The purpose of the article is to consider the laws of the formation and development of literary tradition in the poetics of V. G. Rasputin and V. I. Belov. The author aimed to study the development of the hagiographic tradition from the Middle Ages to the 20th century through refraction in the 19th-century Russian classics, who modernized the old models and endowed them with their own contents. Special attention is heeded to the transformation of the medieval hagiographic canon in “The Last Term” and “Live and Remember” by V. G. Rasputin, “Prince Alexander Nevsky” and “Such a War” by V. I. Belov. The author concludes that the poetics of village prose revives the medieval and classical genre traditions. However, while in Belov's poetics the hagiographic tradition is dissolved in folk life and its internal philosophy, in Rasputin's works, literary reclamation of hagiographic patterns is more essential. The analysis of the updated hagiographic model proves that the cathartic effect of purification and spiritual transformation, experienced by the reader through empathy and compassion for the saint and righteous hero, is of key importance in the implementation of this tradition and in the genre itself. In general, the study proves that the renewal of literary tradition involves periods of trial, depending on the socio-historical circumstances and the readers' collective mindset.