La violazione dello spazio domestico. Il ruolo della macro e della microstoria in Gončarov, Tolstoj, Bulgakov, Trifonov.

Abstract

The article investigates the chronotopic motif of the relationship between macro and micro History within the private dimension of dwelling in some pivotal nineteenth and twentieth Russian novels: Oblomov (1859), War and Peace (1863-1869), The White Guard (1925), The House on the Embanquement (1976). Dwelling is understood as an identity-forming practice that intertwines space and time within an “eternal present,” in which memory and projection contribute to the construction of the self. From this perspective, the irruption of History destabilizes the internal/external dichotomy, transforming domestic space into a liminal threshold where public and private spheres intersect, thereby compromising its protective function. Drawing on the phenomenology of intimate spaces and the concept of microhistory already conceived by Carlo Ginzburg, the analysis explores how the private dimension of dwelling is reconfigured by the intrusions of History in the novels under examination.