Genre and specific features of the book of memoirs by E. B. Khalezova. Part 1. Autobiography

Abstract

The book “The Road of a Lifetime” (2020) was written by a geologist, candidate of sciences E. B. Khalezova (1924–1921), daughter of I. D. Borneman-Starynkevich (1891–1988), prominent chemist and mineralogist. The article presents the first part of a comprehensive study of this text as a work of factual literature and a historical source. The purpose of the article is to determine the genre nature of the text of factual literature as a set of properties. Autobiography is the dominant feature of the work. It defines the general meaning, content and construction. The narrative construction corresponds to a specific biographical model of a field researcher, whose life world is divided into two halves in terms of space, time, events and other aspects. In the literary reality and in the case under consideration, autobiography is consistently combined with signs of memoirs and family history. The plot-generating possibilities of family and professional trajectories are realized at the level of discrete units of a cumulative plot. The biographical model is consistent with a number of features of the travelogue. The work has the properties of artistry due to colorful descriptions, the inclusion of poems in the narrative and other techniques. In general, it can serve as an example of factual literature with an enhanced artistic function