Concept and Poetic of V. I. Dahl’s Literary Cycles of the 1830s (“The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories”)

The article considers V. I. Dahl’s prose cycles “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories” as parts of the author’s integral concept that emerged in the years of V. I. Dahl’s studies at the University of Dorpat (present-day Tartu). The works included in these cycles were written and published in the 1830s, when Russian literature was striving for the large epic form. In the process of defining the ideological and artistic concept of Dahl's texts, the author of the study demonstrates the extent to which the prose cycles under consideration fit into the historical and literary context of the 1820s — 1830s and the place they occupy in it. “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories” are analyzed as a specific genre unity and compared with the works of V. T. Narezhny, Antoni Pogorelsky, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, V. F. Odoevsky, and M. N. Zagoskin. The article proves that it is the Russian folk tale, its genre, linguistic, thematic and artistic features that served as the foremost means for the realization of the author’s idea. Particular attention is paid to the skill with which V. I. Dahl combines folklore and literary traditions, using fairy tales in most works as a special type of narration, introducing the image of the narrator in the structure of the narrative. This allows the writer to collide both oral elements of culture with written clichés, and works of different genres with each other, thus presenting a complete picture of the development of Russian literature in the period under consideration. As a result of analyzing the poetics of “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories,” their comparison with other prose cycles, it is established that the first literary cycles by V. I. Dahl reflect the author's exploration of style and genre and largely predetermine the development of Russian prose of the 19th century.