Journal archive

Abstract: This article presents the experience of reading and commenting of the story «Horse» by D. Kedrin. In the study of literature in high school the teacher often focuses only on holistic analysis of the work, often ignoring the analysis of the levels of the text, which are in his mind too easy for high school students: lexical, cultural and historical. However, as practice shows, these levels cause students a lot of problems. This is due to insufficient knowledge of history, lack of background knowledge and poor erudition. That is why the teacher of literature should help students overcome difficulties in reading literary works. One of the methods of perception and comprehension of works of literature is reading and commenting. The methodological basis of our study is made of the works of Yu.M. Lotman (“Eugeny Onegin” by A.S. Pushking: Reading and Commenting) and S.A. Reiser (Contemporary Paleography and Texts Study). For in-depth comprehension, it is recommended to analyze the text on different levels: biographical, lexical, historical and the level of the title. This will help students to make an accurate analysis of the text, enrich their horizons. In our view, it is the «classical» analysis of the text - reading and commenting– that can reveal the deeper meaning of the literary work. The material for this research is the story “Horse” by Dmitri Kedrin (1907-1945), since it will allow to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method of reading and commenting. This artwork can be attributed to the «forgotten» literature: it is not included in any textbook. This story in verse is undeservedly forgotten: as we see it, it is of interest in terms of the content component (issues, communication with the history), and from the standpoint of the formal construction (genre, composition, style). The goal of this paper is to analyse the story “Horse” with the use of the method of reading and commenting to reveal the potential of this method.