The article deals with K. Hamsun’s novel Victoria (1898). The author offers an overview of various researchers’ approaches to the work and points out that most literary scholars analyzed this story from the point of view of social roles and psychology of the characters. It is further argued that a productive method of research can be to analyze the genre similarities of the novel with medieval Scandinavian ballads, with the author relying on Hamsun’s own assertion that Victoria is nothing but a lyric. The article point at the features of the composition and plot of the story, which are also characteristic of the ballad genre, in particular, its episodic structure and hyperbolized dramatic quality of the plot. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the prose poem Labyrinths of Love, according to the plot written by the protagonist Johannes. The author of the article points out the intertextual connections in the poem with the Bible and medieval ballads, emphasizing that these connections have the character of dialogue. It is further argued that Labyrinths of Love plays an important role in the development of the plot, providing a smooth transition between the episodes of the story and affirming the main idea of the work about love as a powerful force that plays with people’s lives. The tragedy of the protagonists is not a consequence of their social inequality or inner discord, but is predetermined by fate. Due to the dialog with biblical texts and medieval ballads, the seemingly “banal” story of Johannes and Victoria acquires a timeless, universal character, and they become one of the long row of “eternal lovers” such as Hagbard and Signe, Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet
The article focuses on the specific type of literary hero that is common in the short stories of Holger Drachmann, who was considered the most prominent Danish writer in the early 20th century. His first books, “Poems” and a collection of short stories, “With Charcoal and Chalk”, were published in 1872. At the time, Drachmann belonged to the modernist movement and was one of Georg Brandes’ students, but later he changed his political and aesthetic preferences and moved away from the group of Brandes’ followers. Drachman’s artistic style is very special because it has features of Naturalism, Romanticism, Impressionism and Symbolism. But it is possible to conclude that his artistic manner can be called “neo-romantic” according to the contemporary terminology. The characters in his early collections of short stories are vivid, honest, and strong, and they represent the common type of neo-romantic hero that is inherent in other texts related to Neo-Romanticism. Very often Neo-Romanticism is seen as a “reaction” to Naturalism and a return to the principles of Romanticism, but it seems that Neo-Romanticism is much more like Naturalism than Romanticism. The type of neo-romantic hero is closer to naturalistic characters than to romantic characters, because it is a courageous and extraordinary person, an outsider and a rebel, his life is full of desire, risk and adventure, and it looks like a romantic hero, but a neo-romantic hero is a physically and mentally healthy person, and this character is determined by nature and genesis, which is the main feature of Naturalism. Drachman creates a new type of hero in Danish literature: the vital, strong character who struggles with nature and circumstances. His characters have the healthy genetics of ordinary people. Neo-Romanticism in Danish literature was strongly influenced by Naturalism and was the original phenomenon of national literature