Aphra Behn and her characters in Russian editions of foreign literature

UDC 82.09
DOI 10.20339/PhS.4-26.067

Zhatkin Dmitry N.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor,

Head of the Translation and Translation Studies Department

Penza State Technological University

e-mail: ivb40@yandex.ru

Serdechnaia Vera V.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Foreign

Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies Department

Kuban State University

e-mail: rintra@yandex.ru


 

The article is devoted to understanding the image of the British writer Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and her work in works of world literature translated into Russian in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the writers whose works published in Russian contain references to Aphra Behn’s characters and the writer herself are sentimentalists (J.-J. Rousseau) and enlightenment writers (J. Swift, G. Fielding), classics of the Gothic (Ch. Maturin) and romantic historical novels (W. Scott), modernists (W. Woolf) and realists (Natsume Soseki), authors of adventure (P. O’Brien) and fantasy prose (F. Farmer). If up until the mid-20th century, allusions to Aphra Behn’s characters or certain facts from her biography were mainly noted in literature, then from the end of the 20th century one can see the emergence of works of fiction in which the writer becomes one of the heroines (among them are the novels of F. Farmer translated into Russian). Thus, a paradoxical fact of reception is established: the creative image of Aphra Behn, whose works remain largely unknown to Russian readers, is formed in Russia primarily under the influence of opinions about her life and works in the texts of other foreign writers.

Keywords: Aphra Behn, reception, canon, tradition, Russian literature, foreign literature, Philip Farmer

                                    This research was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, Project No. 24-18-00040).

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