символика

The paper focuses on the features of an island as geographical and literary space, as a historical and cultural context for the formation of individual and national identity. Being a brief overview of some of the works of Western scholars, it’s an attempt to identify the literary potential of the island. The paper analyzes the reasons why the island may become a place of revelation and spiritual rebirth, be subjected to mythologizing, and reveal through symbols some deep psychological mechanisms inherent in man.

The article considers the image of the sky as a key element of the verbal landscape of V. G. Korolenko’s Siberian cycle of stories and essays. Its main functional features defining plot and compositional integrity of the works, folk-mythological origins of components of the figurative system of landscape paintings and artistic potential of ‘celestial’ symbols are identified.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the concepts of the seasons in Russian and English linguoculture in religious and symbolic aspects. Religious and symbolic components are found mainly in the associative layer of concepts. The presence of associations of a religious nature testifies to the essential role of religion in the formation of a national vision of the world. Symbolism contributes to a deeper penetration into the culture of the people, its mentality, belief system.

The article shows the social and cultural content of the concept of the hearth on the eve of the Russian Revolution of the 1917. In the novels Suicide by M. Aldanov, Doctor Zhivago by B. Pasternak the hearth entails a complex of motives related to the premonition of the loss of the family well-being.