"Imagining a character...": novel discourse in the memoirs of A. E. Labzina

The aim of the work is to study the narrative discourse in the memoirs of Labzina. Speaking about Labzina's memoirs, the researchers note completely different features of their architectonics. A. Vacheva, focusing on the depicted character, believes that the memoirist focuses primarily on hagiographic discourse. Yu. M. Lotman, paying attention to the writing author and his methods of text generation, fixes the making of Labzina's memoirs according to the laws of artistic creativity. This, according to the author of the article, is already connected with the stylization of the novelistic discourse. It is concluded that the pretext of the memoirs is S. Richardson's novel Pamela or Rewarded Virtue. The novelty of the work lies in the identification and research of novel discourse in the autobiographical narrative of Labzina. The imitation of the poetics of Richardson's first novel is due to the fact that his discourse, with its repeated description of the plot situation of the virtue's temptation and the presentation of the heroine as innocent, meek and pious, whom everyone around invariably loves, is best able to combine with the hagiographic. However, the text of the memoirs reveals discrepancies in the character and actions of the real auto-heroine with the ideal novel's image. She is capable of self-will, seeks to control her husband with the help of his immediate superiors, her lack of education in matters of gender in dealing with other men is questionable. The analysis of the narrative discourse of Labzina's memoirs allows us to identify one of the vectors in the process of fictionalization of autobiographical narrative in the literary process of Russian literature in the second half of the XVIII – early XIX century – the self-identification of the author of memoirs with a literary hero and the stylization of novel discourse.