2026 Issue №2

The article is devoted to the study of manifestations of catastrophic consciousness in the short story. The methodological basis of the research consists of scholarly works in literary studies, as well as in philosophy, sociology, and art studies, which provide definitions, de­scribe the essence of the concepts of “catastrophic consciousness” and “catastrophe,” and pro­pose a typology of catastrophes. A brief overview of works of contemporary English-language literature representing this problem is presented, and the main themes and directions of its development are identified. The practical material consists of stories from the collection “Night Shift” by contemporary American writer Stephen King, which depict both manifesta­tions of catastrophic consciousness and catastrophes themselves — real or fictional but possi­ble. Some of these were predicted by the writer with a relatively high degree of accuracy. The results of the interpretative analysis of the stories show that they describe different types of catastrophes, identify their causes, and reveal dangerous social, cultural, psychological, and ethical consequences for humanity.

The article analyzes the artistic model of the world in “The Bear-God Dialogues” (specif­ically the collection “In the Bear’s House”, 1999) by the Native American author N. Scott Momaday. It examines the influence of the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of North America on the author’s understanding of such aspects of consciousness and being as religion, lan­gua­ge, time, space, art, and thought. The study highlights features of the Native American world­view, in which the images of God, the human being, and the animal, as well as the con­cept of the soul, have key conceptual significance. It also considers the interaction between Native Ame­rican and Western European worldviews in the authorial consciousness of N. Scott Momaday.

The article examines fairy-tale motifs in the second novel of the Gold sisters trilogy, “The Complete Tales of Merry Gold”, by contemporary American writer Kate Bernheimer. The methodological framework of the study is based on motif and intertextual analysis. The novel contains a complex system of fairy-tale reminiscences. Recurrent plots of fairy-tale pretexts associated with the water element, as well as images of mythological and fairy-tale characters (selkies, “The Water Nixie” from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, “The Little Mermaid” by H. C. Andersen, and “Vazuza and the Volga” from the collection of tales by A. N. Afa­na­syev), point to two central latent motifs in Merry Gold’s life that stem from childhood trau­ma: transformation and disappearance. The psyche of the elder of the Gold sisters is char­ac­terized by pronounced ambivalence, as a result of which these motifs both reinforce each other and come into conflict: transformation emphasizes the heroine’s problem of self-identification and her difficulties in understanding herself and others, which she fails to over­come and in­stead resorts to self-destructive behavior expressed in alcoholism and self-harm, while the motif of disappearance, associated in the text with melting and intersecting with the plot of the Snow Maiden tale, draws attention to the fear of death.