Literary criticism

The article analyzes how the change of visual codes in the Russian culture of the 1910–1920s is perceived in the works of formalists. Within this framework such things are regarded as the technique of ‘estrangement’ by V. Shklovsky, the problem of visual image and word correspondence, the interaction of literature and cinematography in the works by Yu. Tynyanov, V. Shklovsky, B. Eichenbaum.

The paper focuses on spatial construction in Jean Rhys’s «Wide Sargasso Sea», namely, on the opposition of the tropical Caribbean islands and England as two island spaces contributing to the development of the central psychological conflict of the novel, to heroes’ characterization.

The poetic song of Bulat Okudzhava «Vanka Morozov» is regarded as an early manifestation of the poet’s self-determination in the context of the romance tradition. Juxtapositions with the genre thought to be the source of the poem (urban romance), with the parody and stylization of romance in the literature of the XXth century are given. The genesis of the key images and motives is traced. A new interpretation of the romance poetics transformation in Okudzhava’s poetry is offered.

The article regards O. Mandelstam’s poems published as a cycle only in the magazines of 1920s. The analysis of the cycle composition helps to supplement the picture of the co-existence of utopian and apocalyptic moments in the creative consciousness of Mandelstam in the beginning of 1920s.

The article considers the formation of the Acmeist concept of creativity under the influence of the interaction of antique and Christian traditions on the material of two of N. S. Gumilev’s poems. These traditions have been poetically personified in the reconstruction of the return myths most renowned in the world culture.

In the article Gogol’s «Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka» and «Mirgorod» are studied in terms of the interaction and development of two motives – the motive of the bewitched place and the motive of strange transformations. From this point of view the cycles’ consecutive ideological correlation to «Arabesques» is also outlined.

The article studies the motif of waiting for game situation that often occurs in the story-line of the XIXth century Russian comedies, gives ground for its essential importance for the plot-building and creating the characters of the plays, points to the connection of this intertextual situation with the reality of the Russian society, its social, moral and psychological climate.

The article represents the study of a persistent motive of garden fragrance in the Russian literature («heavenly fragrance») during the development of aesthetic creativity literature (its post-romantic period, according to V. I. Tyupa). The author shows the change of the olfactory motive semantic content.

This article proposes a new approach to the poetics of Thomas de Quincey’s «Confessions of the English Opium-Eater» through trace notion coined by Jacque Derrida. Confessional self-understanding in the novel is asserted in rewriting (rereading) of traces in the personal palimpsest of fate.

В статье рассматривается отражение специфического для французской культуры XVII в. феномена галантности в «Мемуарах» Бюсси-Рабютена, одного из блестящих представителей этой эпохи.