The attitude towards the use of gesture and facial expression in medieval sermons was ambivalent. On the one hand, treatises on the art of making sermons (Artes praedicandi)  warned preachers of excessive gesticulation as an expression of personal emotion. On the other, gesture became a concentration of thought, a visualization of a certain idea or concept, and a means of attracting the attention of a tired audience, entertaining it, and helping it to understand complex problems. In this article, we analyze from this standpoint the manner of preaching of St. Francis of Assisi, about which we know from his vitae. His seemingly eccentric behavior while preaching always hid a certain spiritual meaning that was concentrated in a concrete gesture (putting a rope around his neck, taking off his clothes, squeezing the paw of the wolf from Gubbio, blessing birds, etc.). The Franciscan tradition of gesticulation was continued by the 15^th -century preacher Bernardino of Siena. His favorite gesture - holding up a tablet with the initials of Jesus Christ with diverging rays in the background - expressed the essence of his credo as a preacher: living faith in everyday life. A similar function was performed by a gesture of Roberto Caracciolo da Lecce: holding a Crucifixion before the audience. Bernardino of Siena's manifold facial expressions, emotional exclamations, interjections, and sighs represent a well-planned strategy for controlling the audience.

Thus gesture in medieval sermons was not an immediate expression of emotion but a means of transmitting theological content and helping the audience to assimilate it, no matter what its educational background.

The article is devoted to the analysis of episodes of public derision of the impostor Til Kolup, who proclaimed himself the emperor Frederick II in 1284-1285 II Staufen (1194-1250) in the Rhine lands of the German Empire - at a time when the former dynasty was ended, and the legitimacy of the new (Habsburg) was yet not indisputable. The author analyses the detailed evidences of two chronicles of the end of the 13^th - the first quarter of the 14^th century (Gesta Henrici Archiepiscopi  Treverensis, Iohannis abbatis  Victoriensis Liber centarum historicarum), introducing them into scientific use of our country. The author explores how the laugh operates in the political discourse.

The paper shows that the laugh in the dramatized performances in the market square of Cologne and Wetzlar accomplished various functions. Besides laughing and deriding, it served as a way of townsfolk's denial of their 'loyalty' to so-called emperor Frederick II and their oath of allegiance to their legal king at the same time. Therefore the laugh was a kind of symbolic communication of power and society, well understood by both sides. The attributes and sets of carnival (market square, townsfolk, a character of a fool king as a protagonist) were in fact incorporated in the "serious" discourse of politics from the space of humour and laugh. It became an instrument for representation the social and political attitude of a social group. In summary, it was the figure of impostor that enabled uncovering the mechanism of the usage of laugh and his functions as a political language in the urban culture in the Middle Ages.

The article analyzes the relationship between medieval theories of anger and representations of that emotion through manual and facial gestures. The medieval theory of emotions drew a distinction between two kinds of anger, sinful and righteous. The first was interpreted as an uncontrollable emotion that could not be hidden: it necessarily manifests itself in gestures and facial expressions, the catalogues of which were created by Seneca and some medieval authors following Seneca. Hugo of Saint-Victor, who singled out six modes of gestures associated with vices, defined the mode of anger as "turbulent" (turbidus). The anger not only distorts the face, but also causes the hands to move, making them "restless" (Martin of Braga). In sinful anger, thus, facial expressions fully correspond with manual gestures. The "harmony" of the facial and manual gestures makes it possible to nominally denote that gesture system as a natural one. The concept of righteous anger incorporates some ideas which by their very essence are opposite to the "natural" notion of anger. Thus, Lactantius associated the anger with the idea of mercy, Augustine associated it with the idea of tranquility and Thomas Aquinas - with the idea of meekness. The Christian theory of righteous anger turned out to be a kind of emotional oxymoron; the gesture system of such anger can also be interpreted as oxymoron: at the level of manual gestures righteous anger retains aggressiveness, but facial expression of this anger is peaceful and calm, in complete contradiction to manual gestures. This oxymoronic gesture system had dominated (with some exceptions) when depicting righteous anger until the New Age, when even righteous characters (Archangel Michael, Jesus Christ) began to increasingly show their anger not only in manual gestures, but also in appropriate facial expression.

The article is focused on the popular motif of Christian iconography; the author offers to call it "the damned trinity". The motif appears in the iconography of the Last Judgment and represents three characters depicted in the center of the underworld: the Devil is seated on the Hell-beast and holds Judas on his knees. This paper discusses the variations of that visual model, the interpretations of one of its figures (Judas or the Antichrist), and its transformation into a hypermotive - a flexible iconographic scheme which begins to wander in different visual contexts including new characters so that each new composition retains a semantic connection with the original, "parental" motif.

The article discusses for the first time an issue of actualizing the motif of the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt in the Russian culture of the late Middle Ages. It defines a connection of such occurrences historical events and cultural transformations taking place at that time. The main tasks of the author were the reconstruction of the meaning and emotional content in some of the most vivid among surviving images of Lot's wife and the study of methods of their artistic expression methods in the iconography and frescoes. The study attempted to identify the interpretation specifics of that episode in the Western and Eastern Christian culture of the Middle Ages and early modern times. In particular, that concerns the image of Lot's wife's gestures at the moment when she violates the prohibition not to turn back and not to look at the dying Sodom.

The author comes to the conclusion that the image of Lot's wife in Russian art of the 16^th - 17^th centuries, who was stunned with her arms raised and closed above her head, should be interpreted in an eschatological way and understood as a symbol of a person who could not make the right spiritual choice in time and so hesitating in the choice between values of the earthly existence and heavenly bliss.

The article is devoted to the analysis of ceremonial portraits of Russian monarchs of 17^th - early 20^th centuries in terms of motions and expressions of emotions of models. Portrait painting was a long evolution from Parsuna to the chamber, psychological portrait that expresses the personality of the model's personality. Traditions of Western European portraiture ceremonial painting influenced Russian painting, but in Russia they underwent the transformation in connection with the specific objectives of the representation of each of the monarchs.

The author identifies several periods in the history of Russian ceremonial portrait, each of which is characterized by certain types of images. Over time the postures and motions of models, elements of their entourage, symbolic items, allegorical images, even face expressions varied. Some compositional and dynamic types persisted for a long period of time, demonstrating the continuity of power and dynastic unity. For their own representation specific monarchs used for their own representation of certain angles and poses and subordinated the former visual images to new tasks. The ceremonial portrait is thus an essential factor not only in the representation of the power and monarch, but also in the formation of a certain emotional mood that meets certain trends in interaction with society.

The article formulates a range of theoretical questions concerning heuristic potencial of the notion «emotion», applied to the contemporary European and Russian theatre. Such an issue definition allows, on the one hand, to research the announced notion in the interdisciplinary field, and on the other hand, to describe substantial changes in the current theatre communication. The notion "emotion" is introduced in the article in connection with the notions "representation", "code", "semiotic system". Emotions on stage make something, the audience is to read and interpret. The research includes a brief historical overview, showing changes in means of affective influence on spectators and in the representation of emotions in theatre. The 17^th and 18^th centuries are characterized by an implicit concord between actors and spectators: certain emotional conditions are linked to corresponding fixed gestures, postures, mimics. Thus, the affective influence is based on reading and recognizing. Later the model of constructing and reading the "emotional code" of a theatrical performance was reconsidered in B. Brecht's theoretical works and theatre pieces in 1920s. The 20^th century poses an issue of interrelation between the semiotic - liable to being read - and the unsemiotic in theatre. The center of attention become such notions as "experience", "trial", "corporality", while the word "emotion", although linked to them, but belonging to another level, takes second place and acquires a hint of a commercial meaning (emotions are sold to the audience in a commercially orientated theatre). The article analyses several directors' strategies of overcoming "the crisis of representation" (according to H.Goebbels) of emotions in the contemporary theatre.

The author analyzes one of a characteristic feature of South Korean TV series - the constant reproduction of the same so-called "cliches", including gestures, series of gestures and mises en scene, in the development of storylines concerning the romantic relationships of the characters.

After a brief outline of the cultural and historical context in which Korean TV production should be seen, the author suggests that the language of the TV-serial is influenced by traditional theatrical art, and illustrates that with examples from the serials. The article deals with the established ways gestures are displayed on screen, their typical and non-standard versions, and how the same gestures may be interpreted differently in different cases. The article also considers how the gestures and mises en scene function in the narrative structure of the narrative, their role in engaging the audience in the process of watching, the intertextual nature of the cliches, and the possibilities it offers for the creators of Korean "dorama".