“Boys with Swords” – The Heroes of the Last Soviet Generation and the Models of Masculinity in Vladislav Krapivin’s Fiction

• Authors: Sergienko Inna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The prose of Vladislav Krapivin is one of the most significant phenomena in Russian children’s literature of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Krapivin’s stories became popular in the 1970–1980s largely due to the new type of hero offered therein. Krapivin’s typical protagonist is a teen boy displaying the features of both traditional and new norms of Soviet masculinity. This type of protagonist was named by critics and readers as a “Krapivian boy.” The focus of this article is on the gender analysis of the character of Krapivin’s protagonist in the socio-cultural context of the Soviet epoch. This essay deals with Krapivin’s texts considered the core of his work: the vignettes, novellas, and novels distinguished by the image of “Krapivin’s boy” – the main character type in Krapivin’s writing. The article also contains the analysis of the readers’ reception. The author aims to show the connection of Krapivin’s literary characters with the reality of male gender socialization in the years after the Second World War, and to explain what led to the demand for the “boy with a sword” character in Soviet and post-Soviet culture.

Keywords

EN

Soviet children’s literature; Vladislav Krapivin’s prose; “Krapivin’s boys”; gender socialization in Soviet children’s literature

• Publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe
• Journal: Filoteknos
• Year: 2021
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 341-352

Dates

published

2021-11-30

Contributors

author

Sergienko Inna

• Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

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Identifiers

DOI

10.23817/filotek.11-25