Cultural and geographical problems of national landscape research (based on material of Russian literature)

Abstract

One of the cultural and geographical problems of literary landscape research is the definition of the very concept of landscape, which some authors reduce to a description of nature, “not noticing” the importance of its cultural component. 

Another theoretical problem stems from the first and is related to the understanding of the national landscape as a typically generalized image of native nature. At the same time, significant natural and cultural contrasts of a large country are not taken into account: it is not clear how to “generalize” forest and steppe, urban and rural, sea and river landscapes. 

One of the ways to solve the problem of the national landscape in literature is for the researcher to choose one of the regional landscapes of the geniuses of the place (Pushkin’s Mikhailovsky, Lermontov’s Tarkhans, Turgenevsky’s Spassky- Lutovinov or Meshchera Paustovsky) as a national landscape; but in this case, an important role is played not so much by the nature of the landscape as by the individual literary preferences of the researcher. 

Another objectified solution to the problem justifies the choice of a birch grove as a Russian national landscape.

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