Об эволюции образа праведника в творчестве Николая Лескова и Ивана Шмелева

The article discusses the conception of pravednik (the pious one) in the literary output of two Russian writers - Nicolay Leskov (1831-1895) and Ivan Shmelev (1873-1950). It is an attempt at presenting literary characters of „righteous men” reflected in the literary practice of the above-mentioned writers which takes into account the following categories: social background, occupation, appearance, clothes, life style, and moral and religious outlook. Based on the chosen literary examples, the author comes to a conclusion that the type of the pious character in which she is interested shares a lot of common features in the literary output of both Leskov and Shmelev. Apart from this, it is characterized by the dynamics of created heroes. At first, the evolution of the characters was affected by social and historical conditions, and later by religious and spiritual ones.