The genre of preaching in the poetics of the book "“Unholy saints” and other stories" by archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the genre of preaching in the book of Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) «“Unholy saints” and other stories». Both the narrator’s sermons and the fragments of the sermons of authoritative priests of the 20th-21st centuries are exposed to the study which revealed that the sermons contain traditional genre features as well as some elements of innovation: a parallel appeal to the sacred text and the events of our time, specification, the creation of psychological characteristics, emotional tension, the combination of Trinitarian formulas and the author’s assessment. In a number of chapters of the work there is a replacement of the text of the sermon with the large-scale predicatory content, a more detailed representation of episodes of everyday life, the transfer of events from the sacred to the household locus. The analysis of the phenomenon of a “silent sermon” reveals the reduction of its main genre elements, the absence of a direct reference to the sacred text, a particular attention to the personality of the preacher and the essence of his missionary vocation. Thus, the narrative is regarded as a comprehensive sermon about the meeting of man with his Creator.