Literary criticism

Mandelstam’s creative thinking is similar to the mythological one. This is refl ected in his lyric poetry as an artistic whole and in individual author’s myths. The article presents the analysis of some features of the author’s myth about the earth, which was formed in the “First Voronezh Notebook” by O. Mandelstam.

The relevance and novelty of this article lie in the analysis of creative self-identifi cation in the book by V. Khodasevich “Derzhavin” (1931), which is an access to the author’s thought. This study is based on the methods of the Russian psychoanalyst Ya. M. Kogan, set forth in the book “Identifi cation and its role in artistic creativity” (1926). This work has never been considered in literary criticism from this perspective. The works of modern scientists are also taken into account: D. P. Bak, K. A. Krylov, V. I. Tyupa, E. V. Kharitonova, M. A.

Zoshchenko’s “The Goat” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat” have a strong intertextual connection. The quoted image of the “little man”, the plot, motif reminiscences, similar narrative peculiarities disclose the writers’ literary succession. In this article we will analyze the intertextuality of the writers’ prose on the example of “The Overcoat” and “The Goat”, and consider Zoshchenko’s transformation of Gogol’s plots, motifs; we will fi gure out what meaningful functions the intertexts are performing. The main results are summarized as follows.

Paris, regarded for centuries as the literary capital of the world, the literary ‘homeland of choice’, gave shelter (permanently or temporarily) to many great writers. Poets all over the world have dreamed of gaining access to the French reader; it has tacitly been considered a special stepping stone to global recognition. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the paths of many Russian poets crossed in Paris. It was there that Gumilyov met A. Tolstoy, M. Voloshin, A. Bely and others.

The article seeks to explore the concepts of masculinity and androgyny in the works of the American writer Frank Norris (1870-1902). Based on two novels, “Moran of the Lady Letty” and “A Man’s Woman”, the study examines the peculiarity of male and female images. The interaction of the sexes often grows irreconcilable, and the theme of emancipation becomes one of the key ones in the writer’s work.

«Paul Claudel interroge le Cantique des Cantiques» («Paul Claudel questions the Song of Songs») is a landmark work in the oeuvre of Paul Claudel (1868-1955), it is one of the largest artistic and exegetic commentaries in the collection of prose «Le Poëte et la Bible» («The Poet and the Bible») (1998, 2004). The writer creates a new «Claudelian novel» in Bakhtin’s understanding of the novelistic word, based on the centuries-old tradition of multiple interpretations, on the one hand, but built into a work of art, on the other.

The article analyzes the novel “La Poupée” (“Doll”) by a French writer of Italian origin Jean Galli de Bibiena, which introduced into the literature of the 18th century the theme of the doll mentoring an adult. The doll character combines, on the one hand, the ideas of the era about “man-machine”, the fascination with “live” automations, on the other hand, the tradition of depicting fairy-tale creatures, concentrated in Montfaucon de Villar’s book “Count Gabalis”. The writer sets up a kind of an artistic experiment through the play of sensuality and sensitivity.

The last novel of Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is approached through the lens of the contemporary theory of power. As a historical novelist, Mantel opens up the mentality behind political and social forms of power under Tudor monarchy, the dominance of traditional medieval system and, in Cromwell’s attempt to create bureaucratic government, the emergence of power devoid of the coating of sacredness. The paper is focused, though, on what is seen as the novel’s central plot, the dynamics of interpersonal balance of power between king Henry VIII and his Lord Privy Seal.

The article considers the change of points of view of the narrator and characters in the novel Jacob’s Ladder by L. Ulitskaya, which is characterized by polyphony and the combination of diff erent narrative situations.

In modern Russia it is widely believed that China has adopted all the best from the USSR: the ideas of the equality of citizens, the socialist structure of the state, the fi ght against corruption, cultural trends, trends in education. The Russian village prose has become part of the school curriculum of China, just as it has done in its homeland in Russia. Rustic prose is close in spirit to the bulk of the population of the Chinese provinces. The ideas and trends that concern the Russian people could not leave the citizens of China indiff erent.