Abstract
<jats:p>The article focuses on The Harsh Field, the novel by A. V. Kalinin the Don writer, in the light of the “frontier thesis”. The initial understanding of the frontier as a clash of wilderness and civilization (F. J. Turner) is complemented by the results of recent works on the theory of the frontier, which significantly enriched the Turner’s thesis with philosophical, culturological, spiritual, mental, and existential aspects. The purpose of the study is to identify various types of the frontier (historical, geographical, cultural, anthropological, existential, and chronological) that unite the entire literary work, gaining expression in the specific ideological, thematic, imaginative, compositional, and spatial-temporal features of the novel. It is shown that the novel is organized by the ‘friend or foe’ opposition, which is realized as the antagonism between the Soviet soldiers and fascists, the native land and the alien one, the human nature and the animal one. The alien world in the novel has the signs of danger, hostility, otherworldliness, and these signs manifest themselves both in the cultural-anthropological aspect and at the level of artistic space. The existential frontier represents the intersection of the categories of life and death, fear and courage. The chronological frontier is based on the dense interweaving of the present and the past, and on the idea of the connection of times and generations. The authors conclude that all these types of the frontier are interwoven in the novel and, bringing the theme of war to the fore, actualize the ideas of unification, brotherhood, and generational continuity.</jats:p>