Authors’ names:
Olga B. Lukmanova – Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Abstract:
The article presents a general overview of the religious component in the fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as an attempt to analyze the role and functions of Christian themes, Biblical images, motifs, and allusions in her poetry, plays, and detective novels. The relevance and novelty of the study are due to the fact that Russian literary scholars have yet to pay sufficient attention to the work of D. L. Sayers. Besides, since the integrity of Sayers’ artistic vision and her understanding of creative writing are largely conditioned by her reliance on the Judeo-Christian paradigm, an in-depth study of Christian themes and images, which form the core part of her religious poetry and drama, as well as a study of the role and functions of Biblical allusions as an important part of the vertical context of her “secular” detective novels remains a prerequisite for an adequate understanding of her work, especially in view of her original Trinitarian philosophy of creative work. With the help of biographical, historical, and cultural methods, as well as structural-typological and structural-semiotic analysis of the text, the author examines Sayers’ use of Biblical elements in her works of different genres and concludes that, regardless of whether the religious component is central to the plot and theme or remains more at the background level, Sayers’ general approach to Christian ideas and texts can be described as “subversive orthodoxy”: Sayers subverts a number of established literary and cultural traditions by shocking her readers with an unorthodox, provocative approach to Biblical material, while at the same time emphasizing that this radical subversiveness is the only adequate reflection and embodiment of traditional Christian tenets, which are subversive in nature. While in no way using her detective novels to promote her own religious beliefs or as Christian propaganda, Sayers never-theless consistently brings a theological dimension to her detective prose, recognizing the theological issues inherent in the detective genre and addressing them within the same “subversive orthodoxy” that underlies her overall approach to Christian ideas and texts: without slipping into relativism, she translates traditional Christian doctrines into new, original forms in order to re-emphasize their radical, subversive character.
| Section | ARTISTIC TEXT AT THE INTERSECTION OF CULTURES |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2024-66-2-162-180 |
| Downloads | 161 |
| Key words | Dorothy Leigh Sayers; religious elements; detective fiction; plays; poetry; subversive orthodoxy |