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.