Literary criticism

The article considers the poetics of the novella The Master of the Jews by I. Ilf first published in 2003. The author considers the image system of the text and the features of the artistic statements, which allow to draw the conclusion about the significance of The Master of the Jews as a praetext of the kind for the works of I. Ilf and E. Petrov.

The article aims at the study of the sources and existence of the most popular genre of the oral folklore – a ditty. Due to the peculiarities of the regional tradition, in Saratov region of the Volga there is a special ditty style of performing to a Saratov accordion which has made this genre a special signature phenomenon and has created a definite ‘sound ideal’ of the traditional culture of the region.

The article discusses the role of the marked repetitions of Gogol’s images, motifs and themes in Merezhkovsky’s novel, the ways the novel penetrates to the hidden layers of meaning of Gogol’s texts by the author.

The author continues to investigate those artistic devices of Turgenev as a novel-writer which acquire special significance for the authors of symbolic novels. The subject of analysis is the technique of ‘partial duality’ and the ‘paired’ scenes, as well as the folklore allusions in Turgenev’s novel Smoke: their features and functions.

The article deals with the evaluation of I. A. Goncharov’s novel Oblomov by the XIXth century critic N. D. Akhsharumov. His works, the article on Goncharov among them, have been nearly forgotten by the philological science. However, Akhsharumov’s reaction to the significant events of contemporary literary process adds fundamentally to the picture of the epoch’s literary life.

The article analyzes the peculiar language of the French preciueses presented in the prose of the middle of the XVIIth century (Jean Baptiste Moliere, A. Baudeau de Somaize). The characteristic fascination with periphrasis is associated with the specific features of women’s education and with the emphasis on the metaphor theory which was developed by Aristotle and popularized in Baroque treatises of the end of the XVIth – the beginning of the XVIIth centuries.

The article researches the interaction of different space and time layers in Mikhail Shishkin’s novel Pismovnik (Letter Book) (2010). This interaction is characteristic for the writer’s prose. The author of the article distinguishes key chronotopes and chronotopical principles providing the unity of the artistic world of the novel.

The article analyzes the features of media discourse of the literary reflection in V. Pelevin’s novels Zenith Codex’s of Al-Efesbi and S.N.U.F.F. Media technologies are considered as a theme and as a technique on the plot, structure, and intertextual levels.

The article analyzes the early works of V. Pelevin from the collection Relics. early and unpublished. The author compares the early and late works of the writer and outlines the vector of his creative evolution, finds common ground between different texts of the writer. The author of the article refers to the practices of ‘Moscow conceptualism’ and outlines the connection between this tactics and Pelevin.

The first part of the article deals with the definition and substantiation of the literary criticism task itself –a parallel analysis of the works of two significant writers in the Russian literary process. Another object is to identify the major perspectives of the philological examination in progress. The subject of this research is the texts by A. I. Solzhenitsyn and V. P. Aksyonov, written and published at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries.