The article is an unpretentious story of “how we worked together”. Mikhail Gasparov called our joint work on a wide variety of topics from Marshak’s translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets to OBERIU poets and then on a book on philosophy and philology a “conversation from two corners”. The “two corners” stood roughly for his domain, philology, and mine, philosophy: although we shared the same basic ideas about the humanities and their scientific status, the material we worked with and the disciplinary languages we used were so different that talking about concepts was not an easy task. This article presents the main topics of our joint work and the proposed structure of our might-have-been joint book (designed for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities’ Yellow Series , approximately 200 pages), describing its individual sections and issues. Gasparov’s plan was to make it an experimental book that would bring together things that he himself made a point of separating in his own work (scholarly articles, fragments from his Notes and Excerpts , letters, answers to questions, etc.). It was planned to present each author’s reflections on the contemporary interactions between philosophy and philology, on the general and the specific in the humanities as opposed to other disciplines, on the changing of the Soviet mental frame of reference to the post-Soviet one and on the conceptual implications of these changes. Also, fragments of joint work on different topics concerning Lotman’s and Bakhtin’s work were to be presented.

As generally accepted, the poem Amra Choluim Chille is the oldest dateable poem in Irish, written soon after the death of the Saint in 597. But as is also generally accepted, the “Introductory stanza” or “Introductory Prayer” to the elegy is later: it differs in language and metrics and stands apart from the Amra itself. It is also to be noted that the content of the Introductory Prayer has no direct connection with the text of the Amra as elegy. In his analysis of the language and style of IP dr. J. Bisagni found the influence of the Psalms. In my article I follow his ideas and I will try to take a ‘step’ further: I suggest the IP text represents an old Irish monastic lorica (protective prayer) and was attached to the corpus of the Amra during the arrangement of the ‘canonic’ version of the elegy in the Middle Irish period. The metrics of the IS are also analyzed.

The question of linguistic contacts between the population of the British Isles and the Vikings who conquered it over a thousand years ago is complicated by the fact that the majority of old English texts are written in the Wessex dialect. However the analysis of old English sources (the manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the treatises of King Alfred the Great, the description of Ohthere’s voyage) and old Norse sagas enables it to be shown that in the 9-11^th centuries both dialects could be mutually understandable. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the co-existence of old English and old Norse in the British Isles before the Norman Conquest cannot be described either as diglossia or as bilingualism

The author compares the perception of the pagan past in early historical writing of Anglo-Saxon England and old Rus. The earliest extant Rus historiographic work, the Kievan Primary Chronicle ( Povest’ vremennykh let ) of the 1110s depicts the deeds of 9^th- and 10^th-century pagan princes in rather neutral terms. Although the annalist clearly condemns paganism, he perceives and narrates the pagan period as a legitimate part of his own state’s history. A similar attitude can be seen in some smaller early Rus texts, as well as, it may be assumed, in 11^th-century textual predecessors of the Primary Chroni cle . In Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731), at first glance, the attitude towards the pagan past of the Anglo-Saxons is different: Bede does not narrate the history of this period, he only mentions it a few times. Nevertheless, it can be shown that Bede’s own perception of the pagan past was quite similar to that of the early Rus historical writers. The same attitude can be followed in some smaller or later texts such as royal genealogies, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , etc. However, in both countries one can find examples of lists of rulers which include only Christian ones.

The article studies several written works of the 12^th century (some not yet published) that form a part of the so-called Corpus Tholetanum , which is known to be the collection of the Latin translations of Arabic texts created on the initiative of the Cluniac abbot Peter the Venerable. It is widely believed that the aim of this intellectual project was to expand knowledge of the Christian world about Islam. Basing on the analysis of some works of Peter the Venerable, Herman of Dalmatia and others, the author tries to show that the real goal of the ambitious venture was to create the “arsenal” (armarium) of the Christian polemics. This conclusion is corroborated by the analysis of the 12^th-century text (Liber Generationis Mahumet et nutritura eius) dedicated to the early years of the Prophet’s life. By examining the story about Muhammad’s spiritual gift of prophecy as well as accompanying illustration, the author of the article shows how the medieval translator reinterpreted the original without adding anything to it but nevertheless convincing his readers that Muhamad was a false prophet.

The author of the article analyses the plot structure of the medieval French poems ‘Elioxe’ and ‘Beatrix’, based on the thematic unit of the birth of the Chevalier au Cygne, which goes back to folklore. In ‘Elioxe’ the salvational function is performed by the female character, whereas in the typologically later poem ‘Beatrix’ it belongs to the male character. In ‘Beatrix’ the transposition of the salvational function from the female to the male character results in the inclusion of the episode of ordeal by combat. The role of Divine intervention in ‘Beatrix’ is enhanced, and the legal fight is seen as the fight between God and the devil. The resolution of the state of disorder (in the terms of V. Propp’s theory) is motivated by supernatural intervention and is interpreted as the restoration of justice by Divine aid.

The paper discusses some controversial questions concerning the role of rhetoric within Canto XIII of the ‘Inferno’ in the Divine Comedy . According to the point of view adopted in contemporary Dante studies, the canto’s sumptuous rhetorical orchestration was designed by Dante to create a stylistic portrait of the canto’s main character, the Chancellor of Emperor Frederick II and a distinguished dictatore Pier della Vigna, in whose tragic destiny the poet allegedly saw parallels with his own life. The direct consequence of the theory of “Pier as Dante’s alter ego ” is a widespread tendency to reduce the role of rhetoric in ‘Inferno’ XIII to simple mimesis and to identify ars dictaminis as the canto’s only default model. The author first exposes the weak points of this interpretative approach, then analyses an alternative hypothesis (formulated by D. Higgins) of Cicero’s “De inventione” and the ancient forensic rhetorical tradition as Dante’s primary sources of inspiration. Finally, she gives a few insights on how this last thesis changes our perception of the role of rhetoric in the poem’s poetics.