Literary criticism

In the process of studying drama, direct contacts between characters outlined by the author deserve special attention. Such contacts help to clearly identify the characters’ dispositions, the nature of their relationship, features of the mise-en-scène pattern. The article focuses on the role of such contact motives in A. P. Chekhov’s comedy The Seagull.

In two articles we propose to consider Karamzin’s reminiscences (predominantly from the novel Poor Liza) in the novel by B. Sh. Okudzhava A Date with Bonaparte. The first article is dedicated to the plot lines of the novel related to the image of the serf Arina. One of the most important historic problems of the novel is actualized in them (serfdom); they also contain links to the up-to-date issues of the relationships between the intelligentsia and the people, inner and outer freedom.

Four expedition periods have been identified in the process of P. G. Bogatyrev collecting fairy-tales (in Moscow, Saratov, Arkhangelsk regions, in the Carpathian Rus’ and in the Carpathians). The history of the first one is traced on the basis of the archive materials (expedition records, minutes of the Society of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography at the Imperial Moscow University, folklore specialists’ reviews) and the publications of P. G. Bogatyrev and other scientists.

The article researches the interaction of the satirical and vaudeville origins in E. Petrov’s play The World’s Island. The functions of the vaudeville poetics are identified on the level of the action development and character images.