Date of Creation
5-2023
Degree Type
Departmental Honors Thesis
First Advisor
Amy Singleton Adams
Abstract
This study will consider ways in which Eugene Vodolazkin demonstrates his aesthetic and cultural understanding of what he calls “Christian reenchantment” in his novel Laurus. While “national medievalism” and “Christian reenchantment” share concerns about postmodernism, Vodolazkin’s novel investigates not so much issues of Russian national identity, but the consciousness of the age itself. Leaving aside any possibility of representing some kind of new utopia to counter the problems of postmodernism as too historically traumatic, Vodolazkin recreates the “medieval mindset” as a way to introduce “Christian reenchantment” of the (fictional) world. In the novel, the return to the medieval way of experiencing and knowing the world is carried out primarily through the metaphysics of time and the natural world.
Recommended Citation
Jayasi, Samuel, "Echoes of Eternity: The (Meta)Physics of Time and Space in Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus" (2023). World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Honors Theses. 1.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/lang_honor/1