Puppet ecphrasis in modern literature

The article considers puppet ekphrasis, including the description of a puppet, its appearance, the process of production, archaic or contextual provenance, on the examples of fiction texts of modern literature. All these levels of “puppet discourse” provoke the birth of enargia (a kind of receptive fantasy), influencing the disclosure of the work’s concept or its main image. In the novel “Return to Panjrud” by Andrei Volos, puppet ekphrasis acts as a cultural pattern characterising the epoch against which the biography of the novel’s protagonist, a historical figure – the poet Ja’far Rudaki – is formed. In the story “Luhtak” by Aleksey Tork, puppet ekphrasis fulfills the function of a moral and ethical metaphor (a “faceless” puppet is compared to the mental state of society). In Dina Rubina’s novel “The Last Wild Boar from the Forests of Pontevedra”, puppets act as personification of the psychological state of the hero Lucio. All levels of Rubina’s novel “Petrushka’s Syndrome” – from the title to the plot – are connected with puppets, and the main intrigue – with the magical maternity figurine of Korchmar. The considered provenance of this puppet and its role in the plot of the novel go back to the archaic magic used before the conception of a child. Dolls and puppets, being the most ancient artifact of culture, perform historical and cultural functions in the modern artistic discourse, as well as vicarious and psychological ones.