Intertextuality of M. Gorky's Christmas (Yuletide) Short Stories

The article considers intertextual relations in the Christmas stories by Maxim Gorky («About a Boy and a Girl Who Did Not Freeze», «The Cabman», «On Christmas Eve»), revealing the author's strategy of profaning the canons of Christmas literature. The aim of the work is to analyze the transformation of genre features and intertextual interactions in these works. The article uses a comprehensive method of literary analysis, including elements of comparative-historical, genre and intertextual approaches. It has been established that Gorky deliberately deforms the traditional structure of the Yuletide short story, creating parody versions of well-known classical plots. The writer's stories are built on the basis of intertextual interactions with the works of N.V. Gogol («The Overcoat») and F.M. Dostoevsky («The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree», «Crime and Punishment», «The Brothers Karamazov»). Parallels, distortions and transformations introduced by Gorky into the author's texts and canonical plots are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of semantic and narrative shifts, as well as to the role of images of evil spirits in Gorky's Christmas stories.