Przełamanie kulturowych stereotypów nauki szkolnej w opowiadaniach Natalii Tołstoj

Abstract

By comparing two stories by Natalia Tolstaya, School (Школа) and Russian Language Inspector (Инспектор русского языка), we will identify the narrator’s strategies. The narrator’s style helps to analyse how cultural stereotypes of Russia are broken there, and in particular, gender stereotypes visible in a Russian co-educational secondary school and during Russian language lessons in Swedish schools. In the short story entitled School (Школа), the prevailing point of view is the perspective of a narrator whose worldview is presented by conjuring up a faily-tale-like vision of the world. In the case of the other story, we make a comparison of the narrator’s points of view with the use of free indirect speech in the narrator’s, the students’, and the teacher’s utterances as well as in Russian folklore and in the texts written to be studied by heart. The narrator ironically presents how the kitschy image of the Russian culture is reflected in the minds of Swedish students and teachers, which leads to creating the vision of Russia in their minds that is utopian and bears no relation to reality.