Svetlana Alexievich’s Documentary Prose. Between the Reportage and the Collective Memoir Cover Image

La prosa documentale di Svetlana Aleksievič. Tra reportage e memoir collettivo
Svetlana Alexievich’s Documentary Prose. Between the Reportage and the Collective Memoir

Author(s): Iryna Shylnikova
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Russian Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Svetlana Alexievich; reportage; documentary prose; collective memoir

Summary/Abstract: This essay offers an analysis of the work of Svetlana Alexievich as the most complete expression of documentary prose, defined as a hybrid narrative and combining the genres of the reportage and the collective memoir. This narrative trend attained full development in Soviet literature during the 1970s and is characterized by a transfer from the author to direct witnesses of the narrated events. While Iryna Shylnikova traces the origins of this trend, a diachronic study of documentary prose allows her to reconstruct Svetlana Alexievich’s artistic method. She explains, at the same time, how a recourse to living testimonies on real facts can be transformed into an aesthetic phenomenon. In particular, Shylnikova focuses on Second-hand Time in an attempt to establish the core points of the author’s poetics.

  • Issue Year: 6/2023
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 1-18
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Italian