Specific Features of Reader Reception of T. Kryukova’s Novella “Repetition of the Past” among Teachers and Students of Grades 5–9
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-6-102-111
This article examines the reader reception of Tamara Kryukova’s novella Povtoreniye proydennogo (Repetition of the Past, 2007) among literature teachers and students in grades 5–9. The relevance of the study lies in the need to investigate how contemporary adolescent literature is perceived and evaluated by different age groups. The theoretical framework draws on reception aesthetics (W. Isеr, H.R. Jauss). The empirical data come from focused group interviews with nine teachers and forty-five schoolchildren from Tomsk, conducted in May 2026. The novella was chosen as it represents the first “time-slip” narrative in modern Russian children’s literature. Diagnostic materials, presented as text excerpts, served as stimuli to explore linguistic, thematic, structural, sociocultural and axiological levels of the text, while enabling a controlled comparison across age and role groups. The findings reveal that reader perception is shaped by cultural thesaurus, generational codes, and understanding of historical norms. The most problematic area was the interpretation of Soviet agnonims (obsolete words and phrases): only older teachers managed correct interpretations, whereas younger teachers and adolescents showed a character-level understanding. Significant differences also emerged in aesthetic appreciation: teachers easily engaged in poetic analysis, while students, without pedagogical guidance, remained within “naive-realistic” reading. Points of convergence included a shared interest in the moral choice of the protagonists and the book’s potential to stimulate intergenerational dialogue. The study highlights the generational gap in cultural literacy and confirms the urgent need for methodological support when teaching such texts. The results may be useful for literature teachers, methodologists, and specialists in children’s reading.
Keywords: reception, reader reception, focused interview, children’s reading, contemporary adolescent literature, intergenerational dialogue, educational potential, comparative analysis
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Issue: 6, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MODERN PHILOLOGY
Pages: 102 — 111
Downloads: 2