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

Literary criticism

K. D. Balmont’s Sonnets of Sun, Honey and Moon: the Title Poetics and the Book Structure

The article analyzes the title poetics and the structure of the poetry book by K. D. Balmont Sonnets of Sun, Honey and Moon (1917) as a book of sonnets, a book of symbols, a ‘chamber’ book.

Cardinal de Retz and Niccolo Machiavelli’s Ideas (Based on Memoir)

The author considers how Nicollo Machiavelli’s ideas influenced Cardinal de Retz as the hero and the creator of the Memoirs (published in 1717). The author reveals the discrepancy between the memoir-writer’s proclaimed anti-Machiavellianism and his adoption of the ideas of the treatise Sovereign (1532). This discrepancy manifests itself on the level of the judgments and evaluations of the narrator, figures of speech, concept of the autobiographic hero.

The Motive of Divine Intercession in Old Russian Military Novels of the XVth Century

The article analyzes the forms of divine intercession as well as the means of their integration in the text of the military novels; the functions of divine intervention are indicated, both within and without the plot.

The Motive of a Person’s Self-Destruction in V. Rasputin’s Stories of the 1990–2000s

The motive of a person’s self-destruction is analyzed in the article on the material of V. Rasputin’s late short stories. These works show the signs of the anthropological crisis which is perceived by the writer not just as a threat of a distant future but as a danger hanging over humankind in the here and now.

‘The Science of Destruction’: Revolution in the Novel August 1914 by A. I. Solzhenitsyn

The author studies Solzhenitsyn’s understanding of the ways and logic of the development of the Russian revolution expressed in the novel August 1914, the writer’s interpretation of its key stages and important episodes, and the principles of depicting the types of revolutionaries.

Yu. G. Oksman and O. E. Mandelstam: the Fate of the Generation

The article shows how the fates of Yu. G. Oksman and O. E. Mandelstam intercross, it also dwells on Oksman’s part in preparing the American version of the poet’s collected works. This topic is revealed in the context of the ХХth century history of national culture. Epistolary, memoir and biography sources are used widely. Oksman’s part in the process of reuniting different Russian literature branches is specially highlighted.

Illness as a Social and Political Metaphor in Literature and Journalism of the ХХth Century

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the morbid metaphors employed in depicting social and political events of the Russian history of the XXth century on the material of literary and journalistic texts. Aesthetic and pragmatic functions of these metaphors are researched.

Raseya by Boris Grigoriev (the Context of Motives)

The poem Raseya is regarded as a projection of intellectual, creative and biographical experience of B. Grigoriev. It accumulates the thoughts expressed earlier in articles and letters of B. Grigoriev to Maxim Gorky, E. Zamyatin, V. Kamensky and others. His painting’s peculiarity influenced the style of the poem. Its heterogeneous language combines classical and avant-garde poetics, spoken language and inner speech.

P. A. Katenin and A. F. Pisemsky. Continuity and Polemic

The article considers A. F. Pisemsky’s continuing classicist tradition represented by P. A. Katenin and overcoming it in the course of developing his unique writer’s and playwright’s poetic language on the model of a specific drama technique (deus ex machina). It has been established that Pisemsky reconsidered the key figure of classicist theatre from different perspectives: gender, age, space and time, but first and foremost from moral and didactic point of view.

N. V. Gogol’s First Acquaintance with the Works of I. A. Krylov

The article examines the facts of Nikolai Gogol’s biography and his several works which shed the light on the author’s early acquaintance with Ivan Krylov’s works. The material from Dmitry Troschinsky’s library has been used for a detailed study for the first time. An epigraph to the fable The Eagle and the Bee for Gogol’s handwritten journal Meteor literatury (The meteor of literature) has been analyzed. It is assumed that Krylov’s oeuvre may have influenced the early Gogol.

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