The article studies the specifics of such narrative phenomena as the narrative of the abnormal state of consciousness and the abnormal narrative. On the basis of the analysis of the works by V.M. Garshin “The Red Flower”, A.P. Chekhov “Chamber № 6” and M.A. Bulgakov “The Red Crown” an attempt to identify the features of the functioning of the narrator in each text is made.

Ostrovsky’s “The Abyss” play (1865) is a response to the French melodrama popular in the 1830s “Thirty years, or Life of a Gambler” by V. Ducange and M. Dinaux, that traces the story of the moral decay of Goige de Germanie, the aristocrat dragged into the abyss of vice. The paper treats the play by A.N. Ostrovsky as a meta-drama where characters discuss the “Life of a Gambler” theatrical performance. The Russian playwriter polemizes with the stereotype of French melodrama with its inherent accumulation of passions and crimes far from real life, as well as with the morality straightforwardly expressed at the end of the play. Feeding on the melodrama by Ducange and Dinaux, the playwriter transfers the action to his native soil and constructs his own meta-plot, while staying, paradoxical as it may sound, within the melodramatic discourse. In his play, character types, who are known from previous plays, act, and the abyss of the “realm of darkness” of the Moscow merchants gulps the “weak heart”. In the Ostrovsky’s drama, the story of an ordinary person defeated by life unfolds in time. Afterwards, this theme will be the leading one in Chekhov’s works.

It is significant that director Sergei Zhenovach perceived the Ostrovsky’s play as a meta-drama: he combined works of Russian and French playwriters in one performance, which was staged in 1993 at the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya.

Ostrovsky’s “The Abyss” is unique in form and content: it expresses the playwriter reflection on melodrama and theater.

Analyzing Tyutchev’s poem “I remember the golden time...” as an example, the article aims at considering the features of its subjective organization in relation to the peculiar use of personal pronouns and other grammatical means of the artistic expression in the person category. The author uses the works of R.O. Yakobson, Yu.M. Lotman, B.A. Uspensky, who first paid attention to the functions of linguistic antigrammatism [R.O. Jacobson’s term] in the poetry of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Khlebnikov in order to raise a person’s category to the rank of a supra -language concept of personality. The article analyzes the composition of Tyutchev’s poem, which, on the one hand, is a way of expressing the author’s position and on the other a mysteriosity in perceiving the chronotope of the “golden time” of life by a lyrical subject.

The article analyses the form of dreaming in lyric poetry. It is considered, firstly, as a representation of the visual in literature. Secondly, the question of how dreaming in a lyrical poem can relate to the categories of the fantastical world-image and the imaginary world of the hero is investigated. The material is three poems in which dream is not only mentioned or serves as a motif, but is actually a reality (world, space) of dream existing within the literary reality of the poem. Thus the category of border as both a connecting and disconnecting entity is also significant. The conclusion is made about how to differentiate between dream as a phenomenon of the fantasy world-image and dream as a type of the hero’s imaginary world.

The article analyses some features of the poetic language use in the work of two representatives of Leningrad uncensored poetry (Leonid Aronzon and Viktor Krivulin). In their texts, most often written in compliance with all the norms of traditional syllabotonics, they actively practiced form- and word-making, creating new words and various sentences without semantic layer. They introduced foreign-language borrowings, ready quotations from other literary works and obscene vocabulary. In some cases, they could also conduct experiments with non-standard graphic presentation of the text, trying to achieve its perfect symmetry.Studying the idiosyncrasy of the poetic idiolect (the identification of language means regularly repeated in texts, new verbal constructions, whole words or forms of words, syntactic constructions) of the “uncensored” Leningrad authors helps the reader to better understand how their artistic world was created.

The article is about the three main sacred categories of Alexander Bashlachev’s mythopoetic system: the time of the end of the world, the place of the Last Judgment, the personality of the messiah. Such a concept was developed in the poet’s mature work (end of 1985 – first half of 1986). According to Bashlachev’s views, the world is on the eve of a great eschatological event, named differently in each of the songs( time of the Gathering of Stones, the Last Judgment, the Day of Judgment, etc.). At that moment, the messiah who is hidden behind the poetic formula, the Name of Names, will appear to the world. Studying Bashlachev’s works have not yet answered the question: where in the mythopoetic picture of the world will this “Event of Events” take place. That is, the available research has not yet revealed the sacred center of Bashlachev’s mythopoetic system. The author of the article proves that it was Siberia that became such a center. It is connected with the biographical collisions of the poet: a trip to Novosibirsk at the end of 1985, during which a creative breakthrough occurred. The poet associated that new qualitative level with the special atmosphere of Siberia and the people who live here. According to Bashlachev, the new messiah will come from among the Siberians, because they are people involved in sacred power. Accordingly, in the eschatological texts of Bashlachev, dedicated to the birth of the messiah (the Name of Names), the Siberian chronotope is explicated.

The article is devoted to the study... of forms in which self-

reflection manifests itself in the songs of Fyodor Chistyakov “Northern Boogie” (1990) and “Northern Blues” (2013). It is revealed that in those works the rock poet creates a bizarre combination of the Northern Russian picture of the world with the world of African-American musical culture. Such non-trivial move makes it possible to compare life in the godsent “South” and in the difficult for survival “North”, where a person’s life is always the overcoming, “daily heroism”: exactly here, in unfavorable conditions, a person enters into an eternal “battle for the right to be” and learns to win. In the first of the songs, these motifs are only outlined, a view of the northern world from the outside and a certain understatement prevails. In the second work, the interpretation of life motives is deepened and expanded due to the concretization of the main human existence’s characteristics in the Russian North, as well as a complex subjective organization involving the fusion of “I”, “you” and “we”. As a result, the picture of the Northern Russian world goes far beyond geographical concepts and acquires metaphysical qualities, spreading all over the Earth as a special cultural code, to which the author sometimes treats quite ironically. The article concludes that it is possible to consider the author’s return after some time (necessary for comprehensive thinking or point of view’s change) to certain original motives and images a form of self-reflection. Such a “return move” opens to the lyrical subject the perspective of self-irony, the productivity of which is realized in creating a special mood of paraparody, providing the ability to survive and be alive in the harshest realities of life.

The article compares two songs from the second half of the twentieth century describing similar events. They are “The song about an Old House in New Arbat Street” (music by Mikael Tariverdiev, words by Vladimir Vysotsky and sung by Vladimir Vysotsky) and “The Little House” (music by Igor Korneliuk, words by Regina Lisits, sung by Igor Korneliuk). The analysis covers such elements as the storyline, the system of points of view, and the motive structure; the similarities and differences are traced between the two songs. That follows with a conclusion on the specific generic nature of those elements, which are realized in the text as epic, but at the same time acquire a lyrical status.

Particular attention is given to the way in which in both songs the lyrical theme supersedes the epic storyline. That is to say, the epic plot loses its dominance, becoming rather the pretext for the emergence of the lyrical theme.

In both texts the epic generic element is reduced and the lyrical one accentuated.

  

The article is about an issue of researching the autofiction genre as a phenomenon of modern literature. The interdisciplinary nature of the described phenomenon is substantiated, arguments are given in favor of the close relationship between literary theory, philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, narratology, ethnography, psychoanalysis in the works of the autofiction genre. Autofiction is presented as an experimental platform for obtaining new scientific knowledge in the field of various sciences. Author considers popular rules for creating works in the autofiction genre, such as demolition of the genre construction, “author’s surrogate”, “self-insertion”, therapeutic effect, discussion of non-standard issues. Exceptions to the rules are given on the examples of the works by A. Sekisov “The God of Anxiety” and G.V. Vrublevskaya “Half of a suitcase, or Writers are not born writers”: the lack of professional literary education of the author, the mixing of the autofiction genre with classical prose, etc., which do not affect the popularity of the authors and their literary works. The conclusion is made about the premature decision about the positive prospects for the development of the genre and the need to use interdisciplinary approaches in the study of autofiction as a phenomenon of modern literature.

The application of the category of palimpsest in the theory of intertextuality makes it possible to distinguish between meaning-forming references to predecessor texts from random, optional echoes. According to G. Genette, the mental imposition of a new text on the classical one, an analysis of their similarities and differences, can make it possible to see their true originality. One of the structural levels, at which one can easily see the relationship between modern and long-known texts to the reader, is the level of detail. Repetitive details, in turn, form a system of motifs that is equally extended to the text and links it with other works. On the example of the novel by K. Yarmysh, we are convinced that certain details of the depicted world and the internal state of the characters are due not only to the choice of topic (in this case, the topic of imprisonment), but are important for understanding the meaning of the work bound to its appeal to the literary tradition. Among such details, the description of the interaction of female and male prisoners, the features of the prisoner’s perception of the free world and the world of the prison as at home stand out. Special attention is paid to the role of the external unity of the prisoner with others, combined with internal loneliness, as well as personal memories and the need to adapt to the restrictions imposed in order for the punishment to achieve its goal – correctional education. Everyday details and subtle touches of the spiritual life of a person who was imprisoned are organized into a system that firmly links Yarmysh’s novel with Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s novel pages about being imprisoned.

The article considers how Virgil relates to some Epicurean ideas, drawing on the descriptions of passion and illness in Book III of the Georgics and in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. The fact is that it is those episodes in Virgil that are called some of the most consistent imitations of Lucretius, and so here one can trace Virgil’s attitude to Lucretius’ views, and by extension to those of Epicureanism. The author also considers the attitude of Virgil (on the example of Book III of the Georgics) and Lucretius to religion. In addition, the paper briefly reviews some of the Stoic principles expressed in the Georgics. While Virgil definitely problematises some epicurean ideals, he does not seem to offer stoic priciples instead. But stoic ideas are definitely expressed in some other parts of the Georgics. The paper suggests that Virgil was selective in his approach to philosophical concepts because he had no goal of laying down a coherent doctrine. It may also be related to the development of Virgil’s personal views, who probably at the time of writing the Georgics did not take a clear position in the confrontation between the Epicureans and the Stoics.

The article analyzes the observer category of the “inner world” in the novel “The Angel of the Western Window” by G. Mayrink: the factors of the artistic impression at the level of focalization and mythotectonics are consistently systematized in the logical scheme of the evolution of the worldview of the main character, Baron Muller (John Dee). The chronotope of the legend of “St. Patrick’s well” is studied as the foundation for the author’s myth of man’s being in the world, manifested in the novel. The observer in the novel perceives the “inner world” of the novel in reverse perspective, interpreting all the events taking place in terms of the alchemical sacrament of transforming one’s soul into a light-bearing hypostasis. The observer goes through the path of the great magisterium: he ceases to control the act, succumbs to darkness and death, ascends transfigured, overcomes the trial by fire and performs an alchemical wedding, the fruit of which is the acquisition of the philosopher’s stone. Each of the stages of the transfiguration of the observer corresponds to one of the chronotope levels of the legend of “Saint Patrick’s Well”, so it becomes the plot-forming for the mythotectonic level of the entire novel.

The article considers most of the films in the Columbo cycle as the classical detective story. Columbo has all the necessary features of the classical sleuth: aptitude for acting, grotesqueness, trickery, breach of the norm. His appearance is close to mask that is why his attributes (a cigar and a raincoat) are so important. Unlike the classical sleuths in literature Columbo works for the police but contrasts against his normal colleagues as a wrong policeman. Depiction of the crime precedes investigation is characteristic not of the literary classical detective story, but of a number of works by R. Austin Freeman, who introduced the concept of the inverted detective story. But in these works there is no detective pointe, required for the classical detective story. In the Columbo cycle the pointe is associated not with the announcement of the name of the criminal, as in literature, but with the way he is unmasked.

The article highlights the specific features of the hybrid genre of biographical writing (also known as «fictional biography»), which has been theorized since the 1990s in France. The biographical novel is a fictional work about a real-life person with elements of authorial fiction. On the textual level, the subject of “hybridization” in biofiction can be both the content plan (speculation of events built around the documentary basis) and the form plan (use of indirect speech, stream of consciousness, insertion of other people’s text, etc.).

At the pragmatic level, there is a breakdown of the traditional relationship between reader and text, as information recognized by the reader as fiction is presented as a biographical fact. The article also maps out a circle of questions for researchers and literary critics to address, in particular, the issue of genre boundaries and the development of terminology, the issue of the relationship between a character of biofiction and his historical prototype, the issue of relationship between an author and his work, the issue of the influence of new cultural and media factors on genres of biographical writing.

The book under review is Inkarnatsiya smysla literaturnogo proizvedeniya by Yu.V. Podkovyrin. The book is an important contribution to the theory and history of literature, inasmuch as it for the first time analyses a whole series of heterogeneous artistic texts on the basis of the category of incarnation. The author thereby develops a special methodology of interpretation that one may call the analysis of the aesthetic incarnation of meaning.