About the author:
Irina I. Sizova, PhD in Philology, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
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Abstract:
The article discusses the distinction between the concepts of «edition» and «version» in the history of the text of L.N. Tolstoy’s stories and plays of the 1880 s, addressed to the people’s audience. The author revises the traditional approach to the textual criticism of the writer’s works, according to which the indicators of a new edition appearance are taken from the graphic features of manuscripts, such as quantitative indicators of changes in the text and the abundance of its discrepancies. The author of the article concludes that the problem of editions and versions of Tolstoy’s folk stories and plays should be solved by combining the tasks of textual and literary studies: to trace the formation of such categories as content and form of works from manuscript to manuscript, to take into account the dynamics of the artist’s worldview, his creative and aesthetic search. To create an objective picture in the research, it is necessary to cover the entire manuscript corpus of writer’s works, but not selectively published fragments in the Anniversary edition and or the volumes of the academic series «Literary Heritage».