The reality of time, history and life in the prose of Ivan Bunin.

The thesis focuses on two major aspects. Firstly, it offers a discussion of the evolution of the notion of 'historicity' in the thought of various Russian thinkers and cultural historians with particular reference to the ideas of Berdiaev, Bakhtin and Likhachev. It also addresses the problem of the contribution made to the twentieth-century humanities by the 'Slavonic Renaissance' of the early part of the twentieth century. Secondly, the work examines various views on the issue of historical time and its perception and representation in artistic work, focusing primarily on the specificity of artistic time in the prose of Ivan Bunin. The discussion of this issue is based on four of Bunin's substantial works (The Shadow of the Bird, The Life of Arsen 'ev The Emancipation of Tolstoi and Dark Avenues), examining the problem of historical time from semantic and formal points of view. The analysis of the novel The Life of Arsen 'ev emerges as central to the whole discussion since it approaches the problem of the notion of 'path through life' and its significance both for an understanding of Bunin's work and in relation to the discursive practice of the 1920s and early 1930s in Russia. Moreover, for Bunin this category proves to be both a feature of artistic thinking and of generic significance, extending the boundaries of understanding and portrayal of historical time in its various aspects.