About the author:
Svetlana Yu. Nikolaeva, DSc in Philology, head of the department, Tver State University, 33 Zhelyabova St., 170000 Tver, Russia.
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Abstract:
Tolstoy’s book “The Reading Circle” is considered as a complete, original literary work of a complex genre nature, in which artistic, journalistic, and philosophical principles are synthesized and the writer’s fully formed, integral plan is embodied. Only under this condition can the analysis of the book in the aspect of its problems, composition, poetics, sources, and textual theory be fruitful and correct. Special attention is paid to the calendar structure and genre of the philosophical fragment, which under Tolstoy’s pen is transformed from a lapidary aphorism into a “poem in prose” and becomes a structural element of the whole of the entire book.