Literary criticism

The author investigates B. A. Vasilyev’s idea of history, the devices used for its artistic realization and reveals genre features of the novel «Prince Svyatoslav».

The article considers the concept of «theological text» in Russian literature in general and in poetry in particular. This concept is defined in the article. The importance of identifying and researching the «theological text» in Russian poetry is shown. Such methodological parameters are outlined which allow most effectively and adequately to reveal deep layers of the spiritual and aesthetic core of one literary piece as well as of the artistic world as a whole.

The article deals with the study of the futuristic poetics features in the novel by A. Bely «Petersburg»; common points of A. Bely and the Russian literary avant-guarde are revealed; the research of different layers of artistic methods making A. Bely akin to futurists is conducted.

The article shows that the literary methods in A. Block’s play «Balaganchik» ( «The Puppet Show») forestall the postmodernist concepts (decentralization of the subject, discoursing consciousness). The analysis of the play «Balaganchik» ( «The Puppet Show») from the chosen point of view allows to get a deeper insight into the sources of the Russian postmodernism and the artistic functions of a poetic word in the literature of the Silver age.

The article draws together biographical and spiritual roots of the theme of Russia in the creative work of a Russian-born German writer Lou Andreas-Salomé, a friend of Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud. Her role of a mediator between the Russian and German cultures is established; her perception of the Russian traditional peasant culture is revealed; the main fictional texts by Lou Andreas-Salomé for studying the image of Russia are singled out.

The article considers short stories by an Austrian author of the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, Arthur Schnitzler. The importance of the dilettantism concept for the author is revealed; the images of women in art are analyzed, who are shown in Schnitzler’s prose only as dilettantes, play-acting both on stage and in life.

The article deals with the problem of mothers and daughters relationships as one of the central issues in the history of women’s literature. On the basis of the comparative analysis of women’s texts of different historic and literary epochs, some general tendencies in its representation are identified, which are important from the point of view of researching women’s writing and aesthetics.

The article contains a first-held comprehensive analysis of one of the less researched early dramas by A. F. Pisemsky «Old-timer and New Recruit» in the context of the development of the playwright’s aesthetics, juxtaposing it to its contemporary journal belles-lettres of the start of the Crimean campaign. Arguments are presented in favour of Pisemsky’s drama being a phenomenon that goes beyond the limits of drama belles-lettres by its aesthetic merits.

Based on the material of biographical studies about E. A. Boratynsky in the literary criticism of the ХХth century the researcher examines the process of the poet’s personality mythologizing, the problem of formation and development of the myth about Boratynsky; the most common characteristics of the emerging biographical myth of the poet are identified.