Keyword: «a sponger»

There is a little-studied but the widely used type of the Russian literature – the type of the sponger in the center of the research. By the example of the character of Foma Fomich Opiskin is discovered a symbolic importance of the system of his spatial and temporal characteristics testifying to the personage hard localization in the context of the social chronotopic. The author analyzes the peculiarity and importance of showing the spatial and temporal details of reality. The character of Opiskin is reviewed against a background of the other spongers of the literature of the middle and the second half of the XIX-th century.