The Tolstoyan context in L. N. Andreev’s early prose: A linguopoetic model of consciousness representation

Abstract

The relevance of the article is determined by the need to clarify the nature of the creative continuity between Leo Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy and the early prose of L. N. Andreev employing linguopoetic analysis. The study aims to identify linguistic indicators of continuity and dialectical reinterpretation of Tolstoy’s consciousness representation model in Andreev’s early realistic short stories. The methodological framework of the research includes linguopoetic analysis and corpus linguistics methods, as well as the comparative typological approach used in literary studies. The empirical material was extracted from the main literary subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. The article utilised frequency analysis, standardised lexeme counting, and qualitative interpretation of linguistic facts at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic-pragmatic levels. The study indicates that the texts of L. N. Tolstoy’s and L. N. Andreev’s works are characterised by a common set of introspective lexical markers. However, they differ in their functional distribution and syntactic organisation. In Tolstoy’s prose, inner experience is presented as a progressive process of comprehension, whereas in Andreev’s writings the dominant model is crisis-ridden, fragmented consciousness that captures uncertainty as a permanent state. The findings confirm the dialectical nature of the relationship between the representative forms of human consciousness in Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy and Andreev’s early short stories. Andreev’s early prose is formed in close dialogue with the classical realist tradition drawing on its linguistic means but radically transforming their functions and textual organisation. Tolstoy’s linguopoetic model of representing consciousness in Andreev’s early prose is not just reproduced but reinterpreted as a model of extreme inner tension. This reflects the change in artistic paradigms from realism to modernism and, in particular, to expressionism at the beginning of the 20th century.