Mythologization of Memoirs in Prose (on the Material of "Petersburg Winters" by G. Ivanov)

The Petersburg Winters by Georgij Ivanov have been criticized by contemporaries for its factual “inaccuracy” and discussed by the contemporary literary critics as a text that breaks the rules of the genre of memoirs, adding to it a fictional, belletristic side, yet an attempt to establish the formal reasons for this statement in the field of study on G. Ivanov is still to be made. This thesis study will seek to draw a correlation between the complex nature of the genre of this text and the fact that G. Ivanov introduces in it a new interpretation of the myth of Petersburg, possibly following the tradition of the other “Petersburg texts” of Russian literature by analyzing the correlation between the motifs that build the image of Petersburg in the Petersburg Winters and the structure of this text. As a result, the anticipated findings of this study will add to the research of mythologisation of Petersburg and broaden the spectrum of literary works that have been proven to belong to the tradition of “Petersburg texts” as well as offer a new approach to the genre complexity of G. Ivanov’s Petersburg Winters.