Women's writing of Karelia: the poetics of Raisa Mustonen's short stories

The article deals with the poetics of Raisa Mustonen’s short stories in the context of the modern female prose of Karelia. It shows how the traditions of female narration are transformed in her creative work: the traditional plot about a woman’s search for love is reinterpreted, which determines the specific features of Mustonen’s poetics: composition, using a complex of stable motifs (including the motifs of escape, flight, etc.), the space and time organization of the text, symbolism and comic elements. The notion of the nature of women’s searches become more complicated. The analysis is based on the stories written from 1990 to 2000 and the author’s conversation with Raisa Mustonen.