Trilogy “Provincial detective” by Boris Akunin: from vaudeville to tragicomedy

The article deals with the study of Boris Akunin’s trilogy on the issue of Russian province (Pelagia and the White Bulldog, Pelagia and the Black Monk, Pelagia and the Red Rooster) in the following aspects. Firstly, it is shown how the intertextual game, so typical of all Akunin’s works, undergoes the “device exposure” throughout the text of trilogy. B. Akunin’s “forward-speaking” in the final novel of trilogy becomes irrevocable: he both interprets the well-known ideas of national writers and humanists of the nineteenth century and names sources. Secondly, the genre transformation of the novels that comprise a single text of Province detective is studied. In Pelagia and the White Bulldog and Pelagia and the Black Monk, the allusion to vaudeville and mystical melodrama becomes obvious, whereas the genre dominant of Pelagia and the Red Rooster turns into the tragic farce due to the growing depth of the conflict between true faith and ideological belief. The complex genre combination is demonstrated through a set of techniques used in these texts. Moreover, Boris Akunin’s traditional ironic mode of narration is also analysed. On the one hand, it is a situational language game, familiar to the readers; on the other hand, it is a complicated system of parodies both on pretext and on traditional genres of mass culture and élite literature. The complexity of the author’s strategy is revealed through the work Province detective. B. Akunin implicitly begins a conversation that will be continued in the texts of non-detective genres (in the novel “Aristonom” and in the project “History of the Russian state”). The state political orientation toward one dominant monotheistic concept, which involved - by virtue of the history - people of different faith, turned out to be fatal for Russia.