Classics in the Mirror of Contemporary Literature

Abstract

This overview discusses the place that the Russian classics take in the contemporary school curriculum and in the overall children’s readings. It addresses several techniques that stimulate interest of school children in
classical texts and allow them to overcome the negativity that became customary regarding this type of reading requirement. A suggestion is made to approach this issue and change the direction of a possible discussion
by starting it with locating similarities in themes and topics between the contemporary literature familiar to children and young adults from their everyday interaction with literary narartives. In some cases, paradoxical
comparisons are proposed for this approach, for example, reading 19th century Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose parallel with the story about the Great Terror written by Evgeny Yelchin, Breaking Stalin’s Nose, 2013. Another example
that clearly traces this classical connection is Nina Dashevskaya’s school novel Day of the Number Pi (2018) that echoes Alexander Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri. In such context the very process of reading classics becomes an
important social skill that presents new possibilities in evaluation the impact Russian classics have on national history as well as elevate their standing within the educational process.

Keywords: classics in the school curriculum, modern children’s literature, literature teaching methods, children’s and youth reading, E. Elchin, N. Dashevskaya, O. Gromova.