Izvestiya of Saratov University.
Philology. Journalism
ISSN 1817-7115 (Print)
ISSN 2541-898X (Online)

Literary criticism

About the historical and cultural significance of Sibylle Lewitscharoff ’s work

The presented article determines the place of the works of Sibylle Lewitscharoff , the winner of the 2013 Büchner Prize, in the modern German literature. Her literary fame is associated with important and controversial theses on the ways of European social and cultural development. Thus, in the book 36 Righteous People (1994), S. Lewitscharoff transformed the Hebrew legend about special people to whom humanity owes its existence, and gave her own interpretation of it in relation to the history of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.

Mythopoetics in the novels of Sasha Sokolov: From the ontological myth of A School for Fools to the deconstruction of the myth of Palisandria

The article examines mythopoetics in Sasha Sokolov’s novels A School for Fools and Palisandria. In the 20th century authors widely turn to neo-mythologism in its various manifestations – from the myth-making of prose writers and poets of the beginning of the century to the nationalfolklore type of mythologism in the prose of the era of stagnation. In Sokolov’s novels, the fi rst branch of the development of mythopoetics continues in the form of modernist myth in A School for Fools and postmodern deconstruction of myth in Palisandria.

Images of Buddhist entities in L. A. Yuzefovich’s novel Campaign to Bar-Khoto

The article deals with the analysis of the images of Buddhist entities and their functions in L. A. Yuzefovich’s novel Campaign to Bar-Khoto as part of a large research concerned with studying the “Buddhist text” of the modern Russian literature. The plot of Campaign to Bar-Khoto is a development of “Solodovnikov’s Notes” from the novel Prince of the Wind: in the new novel the writer focuses on and reinterprets those images and motifs (Buddist ones among them), which he created earlier, and the hero has a biography – including the religious one.

Semantic range of the concept “reader” in contemporary Russian culture

Negative transformations associated with the culture of reading in the 21st century are generally recognized. First of all, and not without reason, the reader of fi ction comes into the fi eld of vision of philologists and teachers. The goal of the article is to analyze the modern range of meanings of the concept “reader” against the backdrop of the established reader’s image in the collective (proverbial) folk memory. The author is interested in the problem of institutionalization of the Russian reader.

The English photoekphrastic detective novel of the second half of the 20th century (A. Christie, T. Findlеy): Tradition and innovation

The article examines the development of such a genre variety as the photoeкphrastic detective, embracing the period of the 1950s to the 1980s of the 20th century. The paper reveals the genre-forming potential of photographic eкphrasis, presented in the texts in the form of photograph descriptions found in classical detective literature (analyzed on the bases of A. Christie’s novel Mrs McGinty’s Dead, 1952) and its postmodernist version – in T. Findlay’s novel The Telling of Lies: A Mystery, 1986. Photography in the novels by A. Christie and T.

A North-American small town as a topos of Robertson Davis’s and Stephen King’s novels (Fifth Business and Revival)

Stephen King’s novel Revival (2014) takes after Robertson Davies’s novel Fifth Business (1975), the first book of the Deptford trilogy, although the name of the Canadian writer is significantly missing from the list of King’s acknowledgements. The paper is focused on the comparative analysis of the two novels, the starting point being the category of “fi fth business” borrowed by S. King from R. Davis.

Martian chronicles of the “Belle Époque”

The French literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that can be classified as “space fiction” centered on missions to Mars and making contact with Martians. The topic’s appeal stems from scientific findings of the time (particularly the so-called Martian canals) as well as the traditional symbolism of the Roman god who gave the Red Planet its name. All authors who wrote about Mars during the “Belle Époque” were inspired, to varying degrees, by the writings of the eminent astronomer Camille Flammarion (both scientific and fictional).

“No matter how to live, but to live together…”: The mother-son plot in N. D. Khvoshchinskaya’s socio-political stories

In our article, the optics of research developed by I. Savkina on the material of women’s auto-documentary genres is applied to the artistic oeuvre of N. D. Khvoshchinskaya. Based on her correspondence, we have shown that there are no fixed boundaries between an autodocumentary and a fi ctitious letter in the case of N. D. Khvoshchinskaya. Her works are a kind of sublimation of life experience. In the article we touched on one of the private pages in the biography of the writer, specifi cally refl ected in the mirror of her fi ction, – her marriage with I. I.

The perception of Blaise Pascal and his legacy by the official Soviet culture of the 1920–1930s

The perception of Blaise Pascal by the official Soviet culture of the 1920–1930s has not yet become the subject of a special study. At a new historical turn, the scientific and spiritual legacy of the French thinker was inevitably subject to revision. The authors set themselves the task of revealing the peculiarities of constructing the image of Pascal and interpreting his ideas in the society of mass intellectual culture.

Christian truth and political power in Evelyn Waugh’s Helena

The novel Helena (1950) is analyzed as Evelyn Waugh’s profound statement on his most significant problems: the possibility to resolve the crises of the 20th-century consciousness through Christianity and on the nature of power. Cradle Anglo-Catholics were always suspicious of Waugh, seeing him as an errant Catholic; the paper uses the work of Waugh’s biographers and interpreters to pinpoint his personal reception of Catholicism as the most sophisticated, strictly logical system, firmly grounded in historical fact. Waugh’s story of St.

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