Literary criticism

The article studies the topic of music and its functioning in the poem by B. Poplavsky Dark Madonna. Its motivational and symbolic structure, as well as its composition and intertextual ties with the modernist poetry are considered. The article focuses on the description of the ‘spirit of music’ concept in the poet’s philosophy and its interpretation in the text of the miniature.

Though the term ‘author’s strategies in literature’ is being widely used, its extended definition has not been coined in literary theory encyclopedias and reference books yet. In an effort to partially fill in this gap, I would like to make an attempt to answer the following questions: What is the meaning of the notion ‘author’s strategies’ in literary studies? How do author’s strategies manifest themselves in the literary process? What is the role of the reader in author’s strategies? How do author’s strategies function in the text?

This article studies the functions of the opposition ‘one’s own – other’s’ in the system of characters in M. A. B ulgakov’s plays Days of the Turbins, Zoyka’s Apartment and Flight. A group of characters is singled out, from whose perspective this opposition is not relevant, not significant. Particular attention is paid to their common features. The conclusion is made that the opposition in question is marked in the problems of Bulgakov’s plays of the 1920s.

The article deals with the development of poetic images and motifs associated with Mandelstam’s ideas about the steppe space. The author reveals national and universal aspects of this complex of images and motifs, as well as their connection with the Russian literary tradition and the individual poetic mythology of Mandelstam.