The Echo of N.V. Gogol and A.P. Chekhov in Fyodor Sologub's "The Little Devil": the Narrative of Marriage

The subject of research is the intertextual connections between the text of Fyodor Sologub's novel "The Little Devil" and N.V. Gogol's play "Marriage", as well as with A.P. Chekhov's short story "The Man in the Case". The object of the research is images, motifs, and structural techniques that unite texts and serve as a means of building an intertextual dialogue. The authors consider in detail such aspects of the topic as the commonality of motifs, scenes, structural connections, elements of the subject world of the works, explicit and implicit quotation, the interaction of homological structures of the plots of the two texts. Special attention is paid to the semantic and structural transformation of the motives for choosing grooms/ brides, the interaction of the potential groom / potential bride with the matchmaker, fear of the upcoming wedding, as well as card divination / card anthropomorphization games. The research uses a method of comparing motifs and their transformation in an intertextual dialogue, comparing the structural elements of the text and the objective world of works. The main conclusions of the study are the proven elements of the intertextual dialogue between the two works, the clearly verified identification of another source of the text of Sologub's novel "The Little Devil", along with the already reflected works of classical Russian literature. A special contribution of the authors to the research of the topic is the systematization, verification and detailed description of the homological, borrowed and transformed elements of the artistic world of the work by the author. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the comparison of the text of the novel "The Little Demon" with the text of the drama "Marriage", the identification of intertextual connections, their stratification at various levels of the text organization, as well as the involvement in the comparison of the text "The Man in the case", whose connections with the "Little Demon" through the prism of common motives with "Marriage" N.V. Gogol has not been considered before.

intertext, intertext dialogue, Sologub, Gogol, Chekhov, allusions, motives, homology, reminiscences, narrative