Գրական եւ տեսաբանական հայեացքների մեկնութեան փորձ (Թումանեանի նամակների հետքերով)

Abstract

Hovhannes Toumanian's letters cover diverse aspects of literary arts and criticism, form vs. content, characters, linguistic tricks, his views on different authors, his approaches and understanding of different genres of literature, the messages he conveys, etc. This paper, however, highlights the literary and theoretical perceptions of Toumanian as they are elaborated in his letters and puts them in a framework. In certain cases, the views are underpinned by extracts from articles Toumanian wrote and published in a number of newspapers of the time. Interestingly, Toumanian expressed some of his views on literature while commenting on his works as well as the works of a number of Armenian authors. In several cases while remarking on the influences a particular Armenain author had from Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, etc., Toumanian also mentions the way he was influenced by them.