Liu Xi
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
The metaphorical representations of the parable of Prodigal Son in dramatic works of Nicolay Kolyada
Abstract: The dramatic works by contemporary Russian dramatist Nicolay Kolyada adopt the famous parable of the Prodigal Son originating from the Holy Bible. The parable of the Prodigal Son has entered the national subconscious minds, and recorded the national culture codes and its historical variations. Nicolay Kolyada successfully portrays the figure of the Prodigal Son who lost the spiritual values and represented an irresponsible father role, and further upgrades the image to be the overall metaphor of the nationality: the dissolution of the Soviet Union results in the loss of the traditional spirits and the collapse of personal value system, thus everyone becomes a homeless prodigal son. Kolyada’s works intend to reconstruct the personal and national value systems of Russia. Based on comparative analysis of the original connotation and modern metaphor of the Prodigal Son, we try to explore the characteristics of Kolyada’s drama and the Russian literature in 1990s.
Keywords: Contemporary Russian drama, Reconstruction of value system, Nicolay Kolyada, the Prodigal Son.
Paper submitted: August 10, 2021.
For citation: Liu Xi (2021) The metaphorical representations of the parable of Prodigal Son in dramatic works of Nicolay Kolyada. Russian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 15, no. 4, p. 82–90. DOI: 10.17238/issn1998-5320.2021.15.4.9.
