Transitional era gallantry culture in the focus of intercultural communication problem (On the example of N. M. Karamzin’s prose)

Abstract

Purpose of the study: The article focuses on the study of gallantry culture in terms of the theory of intercultural communication on the example of fiction written by N.M. Karamzin, an outstanding representative of European and Russian sentimentalism. Methods and materials: The theoretical aspects of the problem of gallantry are considered in the context of the main provisions of modern concepts of intercultural communication. N.M. Karamzin’s “sensitive” novels are analyzed from the standpoint of gallant secular ceremonies. Main findings: The concept of gallantry is associated with the psychological aspects of the new secular personality. It is correlated with the educational and didactic ideas of the Enlightenment and the chivalry code. The basis of true gallant psychology as a sensitive world view is love, passion, and tenderness, which forms a system of ideas for the gallant education of the younger generation in a new society at the turn of the 18th – 19thcenturies. The article reveals the main features of the gallant gentleman: sensitivity, melancholy, virtue, lack of rational principles. The originality of the study: The ideas about the interrelated gradual comprehension of Beauty and Virtue, Love and the sensory perception of Beauty as a Divine principle are likewise important. The discoveries of N.M. Karamzin, a writer and a psychologist, in the sphere of gallant psychology and the general cultural phenomenon of gallantry are connected with the analysis of the person’s internal rules of behavior, thinking and world perception. The article shows how the writer developed new cultural studies at the joint of literature, everyday life and psychology, which laid the foundation of the studied problem.