Cultural Strategies of Tricksterism in the Age of Enlightenment: N. Karamzin’s My Confession

This article examines the main cultural strategies of tricksterism in the Enlightenment era as reflected in N. M. Karamzin’s My Confession (1802) through the image of the protagonist, Count N. N. The author employs such research methods as cultural-historical, subcultural, comparative-historical, and typological. The cultural strategies are based on the general, generic qualities of the trickster as an archetypal hero. These qualities include the polyvalence of the image, the ability to be a mediator, liminality, a tendency to immoral behaviour and play, and the introduction of elements of chaos into an ordered and structured social space. They are conditioned by the main vectors of development of the literary process in the second half of the eighteenth century with its intensity, rapid change of literary trends, general pluralism of the development of subcultural styles and norms of behaviour, which were already replaced by the desire for cultural synthesis in the 1780s. In such conditions, the cultural dialectic of provocative trickster behaviour is in demand, which is demonstrated by Karamzin’s character, consistently trying on various cultural and literary parts, representing various modifications of the anthropological myth of a man of the Enlightenment. Analysing the behavioural code of the main character of My Confession, the author of the article notes the typological closeness of Count N. N. to the images of a libertine Voltairean, a petit maître Gallomaniac, a romantic ladies’ man, a rogue whose image goes back to the parasites of antiquity, an “extortionist” usurer, and a wanderer. At the same time, the image of the hero is rooted in the cultural tradition of the ideal citizen, representing the anthropological ideal of classicism in the Enlightenment. It also draws from the archetype of a Freemason and a symbol of gallant philosophy, which gained prominence during the era of Sentimentalism. The article concludes that the hero of the story claims the status of a philosopher trickster, whose perception of the world reflects a sceptical view of reality caused by both the social cataclysms of the late eighteenth century and the collapse of the ideals of the Enlightenment under the influence of thoughts about the general imperfection of human nature and human cognition.