Ancient Greek historical thought came into existence in the 6^th century B.C. It was the period when two tendencies, the rationalist and mystic ones, struggled with each other in the Hellenic Weltanschauung (world view). Early historians were influenced both by the latter and – especially – by the former, which gave birth to the Archaic Ionian science (Thales, Anaximander). The paper shows that the influence of natural scientists upon historiographers manifested itself, for instance, in the fact that from the works of the latter, starting with Hecataeus, lacked parts devoted to theogony disappear (in Acusilaus, such a part was still present). The author also traces the serious interest in geography among both Greek natural philosophers and first historians. Anaximander made the earliest in Greece geographical map and Hecataeus improved it. The historians of the first generations after Hecateus can be divided into two groups: those who, like Hecateus, had a special interest not only in history, but also in geography, and those who did not. The second group includes the Athenian Ferekides and Gellanik. As for the first group, Charon of Lampsak and Damast of Sigei can be added to it – this line comes up to Herodotus.

The article considers some new aspects for the issue of attribution of “L’Abuzé en court” (“Deceived at Court”) – the French anonymous text of the second half of the 15th century. In the world historiography questioning the authorship of the work since long has been abandoned. Until the 19^th century the author of the text was considered to be the king Rene of Anjou (1409–1480). Later that hypothesis was refuted by scholars, as long as the style of the composition did not correspond to the king`s other works.
Nothing is known about “L’Abuzé en court” and the text itself does not contain any visible references to its creator. However, a broader view of the context helps one to identify significant circumstances updating the longstanding issue. So far the view of researchers has missed such important aspects for the identification of “L’Abuzé en court” – as the roles-playing nature of medieval culture, especially the courtly one, intense literary and theater activity at the court of the king Rene of Anjou, in particular, of his jester Tribulet, who was extremely appreciated by the king, and the wide popularity of the text. Those circumstances, considered together, including the life events of the king himself, allow one to make a conclusion not only on the Angevin-Provençal court`s origin of the text, but also on the influence / participation of the jester Triboulet in its creation.

The concept of fear is one of the foundations upon which the image of a martyr is based in hagiography. The paper analyzes ways of representing the feelings of a saint who is about to suffer torment. The historical sources of the research are the Byzantine acts of the martyrs which translations were known in Ancient Russia, and original Old Russian lives. In the first part of the paper, stories about Greek righteous men are discussed from the point of view of the concept of fear. The author identifies two types of the representation of a martyr’s emotional state and defines the principles which guided the creation of the stories about the fearlessness or the bravery of the characters. In the second part of the paper, Old Russian literature is analyzed. It is based on the same principles as the Byzantine acts of the martyrs. However, in two of the lives of princes-martyrs (“The tale of Boris and Gleb” and “The life of Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver”), the aforementioned principles are realized in a special way. The study of the representation of the characters’ feelings rests on the analysis of biblical quotes that are used to describe the fear of Boris and Mikhail. The findings help to clarify our understanding of the ways in which the image of a saint was created in translated Byzantine lives, and how the hagiographic canon was adapted in Ancient Russia.

The paper is focused on the adaptation of the image of Cerberus in Russian culture of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. Fragmentary information about some characters of the Greco-Roman mythology penetrated into Russian medieval literature from the Byzantine. Christians often borrowed and reinterpreted those images in the traditions of Christian symbolism. One of these characters, Cerberus, the dog of Hades, became an infernal character: a guard or a demon of the Christian Hell. As a dog it turned into an Evil animal, executioner of sinners. Аs a three-headed creature it resembled dragons and other legendary monsters. Perhaps, the story about Hercules, who tamed Cerberus, became the basis of novel in the Sinai Patericon (story about Saint John Kolobos and graveyard hyena). At the beginning of the 18th century Russia experienced a secondary influence of Ancient symbolism through Western European emblematic collections and similar translated works. A lot of exotic images were rediscovered and aquired new meanings. Under the influence of the Jesuit theatre, the mouth of Cerberus became a variation of a well-known in Russia iconographic image of Hellmouth. In the plays by Dimitri of Rostov, the characters sent to the underworld found themselves in the mouth of a monstrous dog – inside an ingenious stage device. Toward the end of the 18^th century Hell as a dog’s head appeared also in Russian popular prints, lubok.

The article deals with the techniques of the moveable spectator position and summing up angles in Russian iconography. Those visual techniques, described by a number of researchers, pertain to the ‘basic grammar’ of post-iconoclastic Byzantine and medieval Russian art. Firstly, the sliding spectator position and the summation of the angles made it possible to show the depicted object simultaneously from several points of view – the icon-painter represented the visual figure in several mutually exclusive (with a fixed observer position) angles. The technique was used in Russian iconography primarily to demonstrate significant objects. Thus, in the space of the composition the creator of the image conveyed all the necessary information about the depicted object, saturating the picture with various semantic nuances and creating ‘micro-stories’. Less often the same technique could also be used to demonstrate peripheral objects. Secondly, the summation technique solved another task, demonstrating the dynamics of the character’s movement. In that case, it is not the painter who ‘moves’ (mentally examining the object from different positions), rather the hero of the visual story. Fixing different moments of time, the icon-painter transforms the depicted figure so that the character’s body freezes in an unnatural position. The position of the body conveys information about the direction of the movements of the hero depicted. The paper considers both typical and specific examples of the use of those techniques in medieval Russian art.

In the East Slavic art of the 17^th century images of the trees of the spiritual genealogy of Russian princes and tsars became widespread. Such compositions were present in book engraving, icon painting and fresco. Despite the general similarity, they differ in sets of images and micro-plots. The differences are due to the specific intent of each of the works. The article examines the micro-plot of the “planting” of the family tree as the most sapid and with its own variations. It’s included in the iconographic composition of five works of art from the second half of the 17^th – early 18^th centuries. In the paper, special attention is paid to the peculiarities of the depiction of the “gardeners” of the dynastic trees (Princess Olga, Prince Vladimir, Prince Ivan Kalita and Metropolitan Peter) and some other characters, as well as their attributes. With all the diversity of the personifications of “gardeners”, “body language” and symbols used by artists, iconographic solutions in each case worked for the one general idea. The czar dynasties of the Russian state were presented as clans founded by “right” rulers who gave their subjects state establishment and order, and also “enlightened” them with the Christian faith.

For the first time in the Russian-speaking academic environment the authors of the paper analyze the creative legacy of the scientist, aeronautical engineer and artist Frank Joseph Malina (1912–1981). His working practices reflected the most important ethic and aesthetic aspirations of the mid-twentieth century, what became an important contribution to the development of modern visual culture. The pioneer of Lumino Kinetic art F. Malina created several unique electromechanical systems for the production of an image, the media infrastructure and technological nature of which would later become the visual standard of the digital age. The discovery of electric light as a new artistic medium allowed him to focus on the production methods, control and processing algorithms for light that produces images. The Lumino Kinetic experiments of F. Malina are based on understanding the new nature of the image, born during the era of scientific discoveries. Several decades before the iconic turn was proclaimed by academic science, they presented the image as a system of relations that is formed in acts of perception and that is not based on visible, but felt, ideated, imagined reality. While creating his works F. Malina dreamed of modeling qualitatively new perceptual conditions for the existence of mankind aimed at further progress and traveling to the stars.

The article analyzes specific features of the Road Movie genre in a historical perspective on the example of the Western countries film production and Iran national cinematography. To that end the authors focus on genre and semantic variety of classical movies, a «proto-road-movie» and the Road Movies of nowadays. A comparative approach to the study of the genre formula provides for revealing the nuances in the stylistic techniques of directors and defining the national features of the semantic core of the Road Movie genre in both the Western movies (created in Europe and the USA) and in the films of the East (Iranian New Wave). While maintaining a number of aesthetic features that are similar in Western and Eastern Road Movies, one can nevertheless observe a significant difference in the way of representing the concept of the Path (the Road) by directors from the West and from Muslim countries. The article gives a detailed analysis of the Road concept in the context of Islamic cinema. Studying the symbolic of the Path and the Travel in Muslim tradition the authors refer to the norms of Sharia, Sufism and to the mode of the life traditions of the Middle Ages and our days. Special attention is paid to the movies of a well-known Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Working before and after the Islamic Revolution (1978–1979) he was the one of the founders of the New Iranian cinema.