Oriental motifs and images in Russian prose of the second half of the 20th century (based on Ye. Parnov’s historical novel “Atlas of Guragon”)

INTRODUCTION. The study of the development of the “Eastern text” in Russian literature as an integral component of the Russian Orientalist tradition has a long history and is a key element in modern literary discourses. The aim of this study is to examine the presence and interpretation of Eastern ideas and motifs in the novel “Atlas of Guragon” by Russian writer Yeremey Parnov, which form the “Eastern text in Russian literature”. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research material was the historical novel “Atlas of Guragon” by Yeremey Parnov, which intertwines various national realities. Biographical, descriptive, and comparative-historical methods were used, along with chronotopic, motivic, and geopoetic approaches. The fundamental method is the structural-semiotic method, aimed at the systematic reconstruction of Eastern images represented in Yeremey Parnov’s story. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. It has been established that Ye. Parnov, in modeling the image of the East in a Russian-language text, creates not an ethnographic portrait of a specific country, but a literary text with Eastern symbolism, mythopoetics, and philosophical reflections, drawing on reliable sources and historical facts. CONCLUSION. An analysis of Ye. Parnov’s historical novella “Atlas of Guragon” revealed that the writer created a unique image of the tragic fate of the ruler of Samarkand, Ulugh Beg, the son of Shah Rukh, the grandson of Tamerlane, highlighting the multifaceted nature of the image of the East in Russian literature and reflecting the context of the 15th-century Timurid Empire. It is argued that Yeremey Parnov resorts to the use of specific vocabulary, the depiction of habits, traditions, and values characteristic of the Eastern people described, which gives the entire work the status of belonging to an Eastern text and is the semantic center of the story.