Natalia M. Startseva

Associate Professor, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-3-215-224

Abstract. The article is devoted to the "Strider: The Story of a Horse" by L. N. Tolstoy. This work of fiction has a complicated history of creation; the text is multi-layered and difficult for the reader's perception due to the fact that it raises the most important issues of human existence and the world, conceptualized through the prism of Tolstoy's worldview. The article considers the use of the antithesis as the main ideological and compositional principle on the example of the text of the story. Many researchers note that in the artistic space of Leo Tolstoy's novels, novellas and short stories, the antithesis is the leading means of text construction, affecting all its levels: the problematic and ideological content, the system of characters, image techniques, psychological characteristics, details, etc. The antithesis allows the writer to reveal the meanings of the work as objectively as possible, to show the readers the different vectors of the movement of life in order to lead them to the only correct conclusions, in author’s opinion. The antithesis in the story, as in other works of fiction related to the mature period, is multi-layered and multilevel. L. N. Tolstoy includes in the system of oppositions individual episodes of the work, descriptions of nature, heroes, connecting them in pairs several times, or contrasting the hero to himself at different stages of life. Moreover, the opposition in the "Strider: The Story of a Horse" is intricately intertwined with comparison, parallels, showing the complexity of the issues raised and at the same time the natural evidence of their solution.
Keywords: literary text, story, antithesis, character system, antonymy, syntactic relations.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Startseva, NM 2023, ‘The Role of the Antithesis in "Strider: The Story of a Horse" by Leo Tolstoy’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 3 (15), pp. 215–224, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-3-215-224 (in Russ.)

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