Literary criticism

The article analyzes the structure of B. Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago as a ‘novel about a person’, the composition of the first book is deliberately studied on the level of the parts (seven parts) and chapters (123 chapters), which allows to picture the ‘idea of the whole’ novel more distinctly.

The article analyses poetics and sources of the novel Jim’s Date by V. Yemelyanov. The author comes to the conclusion that the high-principled artistic framework of the novel is based on the aesthetic and philosophical concepts of the Russian symbolism and on the mystic premises of the Masonic doctrine.

This article describes the creation of the image of the Volga in the early works of Skitalets (S. G. Petrov, 1869–1941). The artistic world of the writer is filled with natural images, which are drawn mainly in a romantic way. The landscapes of Skitalets are mostly bright and colorful, although there are accurate realistic sketches. Also, the Volga can play the role of a psychological ‘accompaniment’, and can become the ideal embodiment of the proper state of the world.

In A. P. Chekhov’s prose such characters as journalists, reporters, news reporters, newspaper readers, and newspaper contributions themselves are introduced. The type of Chekhov’s reporter is studied, whose stereotypical behavior and character become a specialty of a kind. With the transition from comic stories to the ‘dull stories’ of the characters, with the enhancement of the underlying message, the reporters with their single-line depiction disappear from Chekhov’s works.

The article discusses the description of old ladies and old women in the works of I. S. Turgenev, daily activities of these characters, and the needlework which accompanies the image of an elderly woman in the writer’s texts. The main task of the article is to show how frequently old women’s handiwork – knitting – occurs and to identify the contexts of its occurrence in Turgenev’s oeuvre

The paper considers the peculiarities of I. A. Kovanko’s odes written at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The reminiscences from G. R. Derzhavin’s and M. V. Lomonosov’s poetry are revealed. The article focuses on the influence of classicism and sentimentalism on Kovanko’s work and the synthesis of heterogeneous elements that trace back to the 18th century poets.

The article deals with the lexical and stylistic peculiarities of expressing the ‘portrait-interior-landscape’ trinity as exemplified in the three journalistic narratives. The description of the interior and household items is complemented by portrait characteristics. Particular attention is paid to the role of the characters’ portraits in the structure of whole narrative, as well as to its connection with the physical setting and landscape descriptions.

The article analyses the units of time code, shows the ways of their representation in the poems by Elena Shvarts. Special aspects of how this code functions in the author’s artistic world are considered. A correlation is established between the choice of a particular option of the time code and the poet’s artistic task.

The article analyses what Russian authors were on Albert Maltz’s reading list. In this regard special attention is paid to the correlation between Maltz’s aesthetic evaluations and political views, and the official line of the USA communist party guidelines in the field of art. Comprehensive examination of Maltz’s contacts with Soviet dissidents sheds the light on the dynamics of his attitude to social realism which was founded by M. Gorky.

The paper analyses characteristic features of Julian Barnes’s historiographic metafiction Arthur & George. The author’s use of the ‘binary coding’ method is studied. The postmodern play that is expressed in deliberate blurring of the distinction between fiction and reality is noted. The article studies the narrative structure of the novel which reflects the postmodern postulate of the plurality of viewpoints.