DOSTOEVSKY'S AMERICAN TEXT. IDEA AND PLOT AS THE DISCOVERIES OF REALISM

Based on F. Dostoevsky's novel “Crime and Punishment” as an example, a scientific review of modern results of the study of the American text is carried out and new approaches to the topic are systematized. The grounds for the development of new approaches are the mythological context of the American text, the place of the American text in the plot formation of the novel, the connection of the concepts of “Russian idea” and “Russian plot” for the interpretation of the American text, the conditionality of the writer's method and his discoveries in realism by the philosophical and religious utopia of the author. The legitimacy of new directions is proved by means of methods - survey-analytical, comparative, archetypal, and integrated into the strategy of neo-rhetorical approach. The significance of the historical-cultural method for establishing the connection between the writer's ideas and plot formation is highlighted. The results showed the importance of synthesizing the archetypal and evangelical poetics of the novel with the American text. To understand the American text in the novel, the concept of “Russian idea” should not be limited to the criticism of Western values and the concept of spiritual transformation of the criminal. The writer's attitude to East and West, the symbolization of Siberia as a place of spiritual resurrection and America as a space of spiritual death form a new plot for the author and literature contemporary to him, the Russianness of which is conditioned by wanderlust as a form of truth-seeking. Posing the question of the influence of the Russian idea on the “Russian plot” allows us to reveal a new approach to the study of the writer's method and Russian realism and identity.