2017 Vol. 8 №2

This article examines the concept of cultural memory. Special attention is paid to historiographical texts as a means of representation of cultural memory. The author analyses and compares theories describing relations between historiographical and literary texts. Such relations are based on the fiction/non-fiction opposition. It is concluded that the aesthetic component assumes significance in structuring historiographical texts.

This article revisits the traditional perspective on realism as a prevalent trend in the European literature at the end of the 19th century. The author examines the perception of the concept of realism at the end of the 18th century (Friedrich Schiller) and in the 1850s (Champfleury and Duranty). It is stressed that Stendhal and Balzac did not associate themselves with realism and Flaubert objected to being called a realist. The author emphasizes the diversity of schools, trends, and literary techniques in the European literature of the second part of the 19th century.

Myths and history are different but related forms of consciousness. They date back to the archaic and new periods of world history. New forms of synthesis between history and myths translated in the ‘mythical-historical imagery’ of the 20th-century art. For the first time in the history of world culture, modernism has created a synthesis between the seemingly divergent elements — history and myths. This article analyses Schulz’s short story ‘Spring’ in the context of Franz Kafka’s mythological oeuvre — ‘The Great Wall of China’ and The Trial. The presence of mythical-historical images in their works is a common impulse, which creates a space for versatile mythopoetic interpretations shared by the two authors. The article examines the autonomy and synthesis of myths and history.

This article analyses the problems addressed in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop, through the prism of imagology — the study of cultural stereotypes as presented in literature. Within the ideational structure of the novel, the author analyses the theory of négritude, which holds that the African civilisation plays a special role in the world. It is concluded that the négritude philosophy is expressed in the novel through grotesque and the theory of négritude should be analysed in the context of philosophical and historical categories of civilization and barbarism.

This article is an attempt to expose and analyse the chronotopical structure of Boris Pasternak's poem ‘Neogliadnost’/’Spanlessness’, written in 1944. The axiological meaning of spatiotemporal images in the poet's Weltanschauung is evaluated within a broader context of Russian language and culture. It is argued that the poem’s key value-laden motif, victory, is introduced in the text in three temporal domains. Two of them — the planes of the historical past and present — belong to the sphere of time. They are intrinsically linked by their reference to the metaphysical realm of eternity.