The article presents a systematic analysis of A. P. Chekhov’s early stories (1880–1884) in which the topic of medicine in the contemporary society is featured, as well as the images of doctors and patients, motives of illness and treatment. It is shown how Chekhov’s personal experience as a general practitioner influenced the problem range and poetics of the stories with this topic. Their genre and idea evolution has been traced in the author’s movement towards maturity.
The article considers Number 11 by Jonathan Coe as an example of the postmodern language play with textual and extratextual reality and determines the role and functions of game practices employed.
At the turn of the century in their journalistic works Ch. Aitmatov and V. Rasputin reflect on historiosophic issues, identify challenges the humanity faces on the eve of the millennium, look for ways out of the anthropological crisis. In the article the viewpoints of the two writers with the ‘universal points of view’ are compared, and the main motives of their journalistic heritage are singled out.
For the first time K. A. Fedin’s autograph is published. It concludes the half-a-century history of K. Fedin and K. Chukovsky’s correspondence. Fedin’s notes on one of the last meetings with Chukovsky and his reaction to the news of Chukovsky’s death are considered within the context of the writers’ long-standing relationship.
The article considers the 1956 trial of the publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert on the charge of an outrage against public morals. Pauvert decided to openly publish Marquis de Sade’s papers. The prosecution arguments, the responses of the publisher and of the witnesses for the defense – J. Paulhan, G. B ataille, J. Cocteau and A. B reton – are analyzed on the ground of the documents.
The article deals with different aspects of morbidity problem range in M. A. Aldanov’s historic novels. The author analyzes both traditional literary functions of the illness motives (their important role in unfolding the characters’ portraits, in plot development) and those peculiar for Aldanov’s oeuvre, where the medical discourse becomes one of the languages to describe the catastrophic epoch of the end XIXth – beginning XXth centuries.
The article considers the techniques of formal organization of the transcendent lyric poetry and the peculiarity of its spatial structure. Different types of poetic transcendence are analyzed on the example of N. Gumilyov’s poems, their characteristic features are singled out.
In this article we analyze the description of spiritual séances in the works of R. B rowning, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, F. Marryat and Arthur Conan Doyle. We also try to explain the frequency of occurrence of séances in the British literature of the late XIXth – early XXth centuries.
The article touches upon the socio-political and aesthetic views of K. N. Leontiev, the writer’s standpoint is shown as it is reflected in modern literary criticism. It is pointed out that modern research literature does not have a consistent theory of text interpretation metho
The author analyzes A. P. Chekhov’s letters from the point of view of literary editing theory as the examples of different text types in the way of presentation. Narration, description, reflection, definition and explanation are considered, and their features are identified.
