Portrait in the book “Journey to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery...” by S. P. Shevyrev

The research aims to characterize the peculiarities of portrait construction in S. P. Shevyrev’s book “Journey to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery…” (1850). The content of the paper consists of a general characterization of Shevyrev’s role in the history of Russian culture in the 19th century, a brief overview of literary approaches to the problem of portraiture, and a detailed analysis of the typology of portraits in Shevyrev’s book. The scientific novelty of this paper is determined, first of all, by the limited study of Shevyrev’s work under consideration. Despite the growing interest in S. P. Shevyrev’s writings, the literary facets of his talent remain not only unappreciated, but even undescribed and unsystematized. In addition, the novelty is accounted for by the chosen research perspective – the analysis of the features of the portrait typology and poetics in the book “Journey to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery…”. In the process of analysis, a literary perspective on the problem of portraiture as an artistic technique in Shevyrev’s book was formed for the first time. A typology of portraits was also compiled, in which the following groups were identified: portraits of 1) “ordinary people”; 2) spiritual figures and “enlightened” people (teachers, scientists); 3) hagiographic portraits (Nilus of Sora, Cyril of Beloozero, Nicetas Stylites, etc.); 4) “frontier portraits” (i.e., those that emphasize the image of a “frontier person”). As a result of the research, it was observed that the nature of the writer’s portraits is determined by the sketching (realistic) and hagiographic (rhetorical) principles of depiction. The paper contributes to the study of S. P. Shevyrev’s creative work, as well as enriches the understanding of the picture of sketch prose development in the mid-19th century: it includes Shevyrev’s “journey” in the list of writings, expands the understanding of the typology of the sketch portrait.