Literary criticism

The term ‘hybridity’ used in the article refers to the issue of how human and animal features merge in the post-Darwinian idea of the human model, as it is presented in the works of Byatt. In her novels hybridity takes many various forms and is perceived as an inherent genetically developed structure unlike the crude mixture of bestiary creatures.

The article analyzes parenthetical statements by A. I. Solzhenitsyn on the material of the ‘sketches of literary life’ – The Oak and the Calf. It is proved that this type of narrative is an important means of manifesting the author’s personality in the writer’s memoirs.

In the article the problem of evil revealed in Solzhenitsyn’s story as the terrible reality of the fallen world is considered in the aspect of the significant situations of the test to which the camp society and the hero are subjected. According to the analysis, in the course of the narration, into which the situations of testing are interwoven, the essence of the camp society is revealed as a definite structure of life, and the character of the hero and his system of values are tested.
 

The article studies special features of the portrait genre in the Russian literature of the 20th century. Alongside traditional genre techniques in his cycle Little Portraits, V. P. Nekrasov uses his signature ones designed to reveal the individuality of the character, which allows us to talk about the genre evolution.

Against the vogue for Russia in British travel books of the 1930s, the paper brings back to light James Hilton’s novel Knight Without Armour (1933), set mainly in Russia in Revolutionary years. This entertainment novel is shown to lack the excessive political stance on Russia found in the travel genre of the period. Hilton creates a nice balance between general Western stereotypes of Russia and his individual vision, thus normalizing the reception of Russia for Western reader.

The article focuses on studying the motives of the first canto of Inferno in A. P. Chekhov’s story Student. Possible allusions to the first canto are evident in Chekhov’s choice of the time and place of where the character experiences his spiritual drama, in the semantics and function of the locuses, and key motives highlighting the character’s path. The author assumes that Dante’s ideals might have given rise to Chekhov’s idea of the unity of life in the world.

The article focuses on the garden as a literary image based on the archetype and some mythological allusions. The structure of the garden is analyzed in detail as the novel space at variance and in connection with the naturalistic aesthetic approach.

The article attempts to study the methods of depicting saints in the texts by N. S. Leskov on the example of the images of saint bishops Philaret Drozdov and Philaret Amphiteatrov. The polarity of expressive means in the descriptions of the characters is emphasized as largely driven by the narrator’s pathos. The analysis is based not only on the material of the Trifles from the Life of Archbishops, but also of some other works.

One of the defining features of Pushkin’s work was the issue of the ‘law and mercy’. The law and mercy conflict is also represented in the prose of A. I. Solzhenitsyn. In his works, Solzhenitsyn gives a distinctive interpretation of this tradition, which defines the main trend of the Russian literature not only of the 19th, but the 20th and 21st centuries as well.

The article studies content and formal aspects of emotional intensity in I. Brodsky’s early oeuvre; the techniques which would afterwards define his reserved artistic manner are identified.