One of the most relevant trends that interests modern language science is the study of the way the inner world of humans is encoded in literary texts through various linguistic means. At the same time, the issues of specificity of using color designations as a means of conveying emotional information in Ivan Turgenev’s works remain incompletely studied.

This work comprehensively analyzes the features of verbalizing the emotive space through lexemes with the semantics of color in Ivan Turgenev’s novella “First Love”. The research methods include contextual, semantic, linguistic-statistical, descriptive and psycholinguistic analyses.

In the course of our research, we examined the occurrences of color lexemes along with their quantitative and frequency characteristics in Ivan Turgenev’s novella “First Love”. The article provides a classification of all identified words based on categorical-lexical themes and analyzes their specificity of associative emotive reinterpretation in the context.

Color is a key element of visually perceived objects and phenomena, playing a crucial role in humans’ understanding of the surrounding world. In the context of Ivan Turgenev’s literary works, color lexemes both reflect the color characteristics of the objects and enable the writer to better reflect his worldview and emotional-psychological state. They imbue the text with figurative meanings and lend it emotional and evaluative coloration.

The article deals with new sources from the Archives of the Humboldt University in Berlin, which allow us to present in detail the defense procedure of the famous turkologist Ahmet Temir’s thesis. Ahmet Temir entered the University of Berlin in 1936 and studied there for nine semesters. His thesis was ready by the spring of 1941. In particular, the article presents what documents were submitted by the applicant to the university, what reviews were written on his thesis, and how he passed the oral examination. German researchers confirmed the high scientific quality of Akhmet Temir’s thesis, which, in their opinion, besides having a serious linguistic base, was also truly innovative research, deserving high praise and setting new trends in Turkology. This peer-reviewed study was supported by experienced scholars. The thesis was submitted for defense in the very first phase of World War II; so, the political and military events had an impact on the defense procedure, as well as on the prospect of the thesis publication, which was eventually published only long afterwards, in 1956. The procedure itself included two stages an oral examination and a public defense of the thesis and lasted for two whole years Ahmet Temir received his Ph.D. degree only in July 1943.

The article describes the four-volume “Ethnocultural Dictionary of the Tatar Language”, which was compiled by a team of teachers from the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication of Kazan Federal University. This work records the vocabulary of the Tatar language, reflecting the people’s traditional culture, which accumulates information about the surrounding world, living conditions, everyday life, work organization, etc. Such studies are a reliable aid in studying the circumstances and factors of the national culture formation.

Ethnocultural dictionaries give a fragmentary idea of the Tatar people’s linguistic picture of the world. To determine the role and place of culturally marked vocabulary selected for the compilation of the dictionary entries, its authors analyzed the dictionaries of the 19^th-21^st centuries, studied the use of these words as part of phraseological units, proverbs and sayings, as well as their use in songs and works of art. This study of the culturally marked units adds new data to the history of the formation, development and improvement of Tatar material and spiritual culture. The proposed works can serve as a model for compiling ethnocultural dictionaries of other Turkic-speaking peoples; the material, collected in these lexicographic works, will find a worthy place in the dictionaries of concepts of Turkic languages.

The paper considers the neural and functional grounding of human skills in the production metaphoric/metonymic extension. Two existing theories underlie the main concept of the paper. The first one focuses on the correspondence of a certain cell assembly in the human cortex to a specific entity or an object; the cell assembly may embed the neurons pertaining to different cortex areas (sensory, motor, or language areas). The second proposition employed is based on the theory of Geschtalt, arising as a consequence of an object/event’s repeated perception. We also consider the model of a higher-order cell assembly formation. According to the model, some lower-order cell assemblies, each of them corresponding to a Geschtalt component, may be united in the framework of a Geschtalt matrix. The process is embodied in cognitive and verbal domains. We argue that the existing denotation, encoded in the preceding cell assembly, is transposed onto a new one represented by the Geschtalt cell assembly, when the phonetic form and semantics of the previous object are retained during this process. The neurophysiological process, which has been detailed in the paper, bears considerably on language evolution. In the case where the phonetic contours and semantics of an existing lexeme are transferred upon a second lexeme, adjacent to the first one within the Geshtalt framework, a whole tree of lexemes pertaining to one cognitive domain is formed. Due to this phenomenon, lexeme diversification occurs, which in turn gives rise to the formation and ramification of language dialects.

This work studies the vocabulary of outerwear in two related Turkic languages – Tatar and Chuvash. These two languages of neighboring peoples closely interact, which leads to their interpenetration, including the linguistic elements.

In the article, Tatar and Chuvash lexemes, included in the thematic group “outerwear”, are analyzed in a comparative aspect. The words are considered in historical and etymological terms. The work provides examples from other Turkic languages and investigates the borrowing of these words into the Russian language.

The article concludes that the stem of lexemes expressing the meaning of outerwear is made up of common Turkic words such as chikmen, tolyp, kurk, chapan, ermek, tun, bishmet, etc., although researchers believe some of them to be borrowings from other languages. Some of the words were borrowed into the Chuvash language from Tatar: sapan, kamsul, beshmet, etc. The etymology of such foreign words as kamsul is generally believed to come from Italian through Russian, zybyn, choba from Arabic, etc. Some names of outerwear were adopted into the Russian language from Turkic languages: beshmet, azyam, armyak, chekmen, epancha, kaftan, tulup, chapan, etc. The fact that the origin of many words is determined by scientists in different ways makes their study more complicated.

The article is devoted to the use of prepositions in the diplomatic language of the Russian and Chinese languages. The subject of the study is the structural and semantic characteristics of prepositional constructions typical of the diplomatic substyle. The main goal is a comparative analysis of the preposition use as one of the diplomatic substyle linguistic features in the languages under consideration and the identification of their features in terms of their structure and meaning. To achieve this goal, methods of comparative analysis, statistical analysis and component analysis were used. Bilingual diplomatic documents from the official websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and China over the period from 1994 to 2023 were selected as research material. As a result of the study, we conclude that prepositions are actively used in both Russian and Chinese diplomatic styles, but their structures and meanings differ. We have found that from the point of view of the constructions’ meanings, both languages possess prepositional constructions to express the meanings of goals, methods and bases. However, in the Chinese language there is a special group of prepositions expressing the subject or object of an action, while in the Russian language such meanings are conveyed using case forms.

The article represents the speech of the senior age group from the Central Black Earth Region. The purpose of this scientific essay is to describe, by means of the folk dialect, the 20 th -century realities of the residents from the village of 2nd Voznesenovka, the Talovsky District. The subject of the study is the world of man in the Voronezh Province of the last century. The object of this work is the Voznesenov dialect. In the course of writing the article, we used the methods of stationary observation, interviewing, analysis and description. As a result, through one of the dialects of the Voronezh Region, we present the realities of the villagers: their family, war and the memory of it, times of hunger, their housing, education, different types of work, farming, local authorities and relations with them, field work and gardening, the material side of life, etc. It is concluded that the villagers’ peculiarity is their simplicity, openness, hard work, sincerity, generosity, original ingenuity, ability to overcome temporary misfortunes, remaining honest and decent. The article shows that there is special care for each other and the truly great rural spirit, coupled with faith in a higher power. Based on the realities of the Voznesenovites, presented in the article, we get an idea of the South Russian dialect (the system of vocalism). This material has been introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

This article describes a new genre of congratulatory discourse two-phase creative texts. It analyzes the texts of modern greeting cards, as well as texts on bento cakes and substantiates the legitimacy of identifying this genre, taking into account a number of genre-forming features. We claim that the text of a creative greeting card has moved from paper to a confectionery product, that is, the creative greeting card (literally and figuratively) is now the cake and its packaging. The article proves that two-phase creative texts have a special structure they are parceled and placed on different surfaces, that is, locally separated, due to which a two-stage perception of the text occurs. This structure increases the pragmatic potential of texts of this genre and determines the mechanism of their linguistic creativity. The functional feature of these texts is their pronounced humorous dominant, colloquial nature, playfully ironic tone, unpredictability of the second part semantics of the text, which affects its stylistic characteristics. Two-phase creative texts are also characterized by precedent. The article connects the emergence of two-phase creative texts with the development of congratulatory discourse and the strengthening of the mass linguistic creativity role in modern society.

Onomastics in fiction is a promising, young, but a rapidly developing branch of knowledge in linguistics. It expresses the importance of onomastic material in different ways, and its inclusion in scientific circulation covers the study of a wide range of historical, geographical and linguistic issues, starting from ancient times to the present time.

Onyms are an important component of the semantic and stylistic system in the author’s use of language in fiction. They organically and willingly join the system of linguistic means of a literary text, participate in the formation of the work’s overall expressiveness, entering the author’s lexicon as an important indicator of the author’s style and creating an “onomastic space” of the work.

Onyms in Bashkir, as well as in many Turkic languages, arouse the interest of many scientists. This article studies structural and word-formation features in the work of the national Bashkortostan poet Mustai Karim. A characteristic feature of the great writer’s literary texts is the use of word-formation suffixes in the onym formation in a work of fiction. In addition, we explored the components of these words. The study of the word formation structure and system of the presented lexemes proves that they will always comply with the norms of the Bashkir language.

Folk riddles have recently become a fairly popular object of linguistic and linguocultural research due to their complex structural and semantic organization, which allows analyzing this folklore genre in semantic, structural and functional aspects. This study explores the description features of wild and domestic animals within the framework of an enigmatic text. The object of our research is to identify the presence of linguistic and cultural connotations in the description of wild and domestic animals and to trace the degree of taboo in using animal names in folk riddles. The tasks set are due to the fact that an archaic person’s life was largely connected with agricultural activities carried out with the help of livestock, as well as the need to protect themselves from wild animals attacking livestock. During the analysis of the linguistic material, we found that Russian and English folk riddles about animals were characterized either by omission of the subject of action in the descriptive part of the riddle, or the introduction of occasional vocabulary, which is largely consistent with the laws of taboo. In the Russian folk riddle, an occasional noun of this type is often introduced for the name of an animal: stuchikha (someone knocking), gremikha (someone rattling), with a rather transparent semantics that actualizes the initial action: (stuchat' – stuchikha, gremet' – gremikha). In the corpus of English folk riddles, we have noted a conversion transition (the verb lick transforms into the noun lick), as a result of which the noun also develops the meaning of the subject of a given action. In addition, we found the absence of a linguocognitive component in the description of animals, since the description of the denotation is mainly based on the actualization of a typical feature (the ability to bark, the presence of a certain number of hooves, horns, the ability to hunt animals).

The article analyzes “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by Nikolay Karamzin in terms of the symbolic-mythological perception of space, suggesting a view of the countries, depicted in the travelogue, as symbolic-mythological units of the “mental map” in the book. A “mental map” is understood as a holistic image of a geographical space, value-restructured in accordance with the author’s vision of European cultural and the historical situation. The purpose of the work is to reveal the hidden additional plot of Karamzin’s book, which determines the logic of the perception of geographical space and its comprehension, taking into account the historical and political situation witnessed by Karamzin’s hero-traveler. Using the methodology of the structural-semiotic, historical-genetic and comparative-typological reading of the text, as well as the methodology of human geography, the article shows how Karamzin generalizes ideas about the logic of the Western European history and culture development at the end of the 18th century. We also characterize the writer’s symbolic and mythological view of the cultural dialogue between Russia and Europe, the place and role of the “Letters...” of France, Switzerland, England and the countries of the German world on the “mental map”. Conclusions are drawn about the significance of the spatial image of “Letters...” for the design of Karamzin’s historical and political concept of the late 18th century, in which the key role was played by the ideas of the dialogue, the ability to evaluate the achievements of European culture and to develop the potential of Russian culture.

The article is devoted to the problem of the world image in the poetry of modern Kazakhstan Russian-speaking poets. This problem is closely related to the authors’ self-identity. The Russian language is chosen by authors of various ethnicities: Russians, Kazakhs and Poles. Kazakhstan has historically developed as a multi-ethnic region; in post-Soviet times, Russian is largely preserved as a language of interethnic communication. The article identifies and analyses the following components that make up the hybrid identity of Russian-speaking authors: their memory of ethnic roots, sociocultural identity, regional identity and civic identity. It is shown that such features as transborderness and transculturation, characteristic of the “nomadic” subject of modern poetry, fully correspond to the type of nomadic culture that has long been established on the territory of the Great Steppe. Hybrid identity in the poetry of Kazakhstan Russian-speaking authors determines its polysubjectivity, interaction of voices and dialogue among speech zones of different subjects, giving rise to the effect of the lyrical poetry “romanization”, which affects the prosaization of the verse form. Of the genre varieties, the most characteristic one is the form of poetic conversation. A striking feature of this poetry is the lyrical hero’s self-irony and the active use of intertextuality. Different components found in the authors’ inner self does not as much create a conflict situation as it allows them to avoid thinking in rigid binary oppositions, without removing a critical view of both today’s Kazakhstan and Russia.

There is a lot of interest in travelogue in the research environment today. Russian oriental travelogues, associated with the Central Asian region, have not been studied sufficiently before, besides a certain number of substantive works primarily of a historiographical nature. A special body of problems here is related to the origins of the Russian Central Asian travelogue formation as a genre structure. One of the texts, related to the “origins of the genre” and taken for consideration in this article, is a note by an anonymous author-compiler entitled “News of Bukharia”, published in the “Monthly Historical and Geographical Dictionary for 1779” (St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences). The article is a kind of commentary on this note. We characterize the journal in which it was presented – the printed secular calendar of the 18^th century, it differs from the religious ones. The article determines historical, cultural, landscape and geographical realities, reflected in it, and identifies the ideological position of the compiler in the context of the eastern imperial policy of those years. We cautiously assume that when writing the text, the author could use materials on Central Asia from Western sources. There is no literary element as such in the described note. This is not a travelogue in the exact meaning of the term, but a concise informative essay on a regional topic, in which, however, there is no strategy for an objective scientific narrative (“pure curiosity”). We can clearly see the journalistic (state) ideologems of its era, combining the economic aspirations of Russia and its geopolitical attitudes (it is significant that in the note the reader he does not even find any ethnographic images of Central Asian people, their portraits, morals and everyday habits). At the same time, the text of the “News of Bukharia” includes separate general literary components– strict composition, laconism of speech style and logical sequence. The text is important as an early stage in the formation of a scientific and artistic Central Asia modus, as a phenomenon of “documentary literature”, not “fictional literature”.

The article deals with the system of images in the magic fairy tales by M. Eminescu and I. Creangă. The research purpose is to determine the invariant features of the characters in Romanian-Moldovan folklore, to contrast the authors’ images of the characters with their prototypes and to compare the systems of images of both M. Eminescu and I. Creangă. The nominative approach allows us to find out how this specificity is manifested in the fairy tale texts through the names of various characters. The article covers detailed descriptions of Romanian-Moldovan magic fairy tale personages. These include positive characters, such as Făt-Frumos and Ileana Cosânzeana, as well as villains, for instance, Muma Pădurii, Statupalmă-barbă-cot and Zmeul. The classification of characters is based on the V. Propp and E. Meletinsky approach to the magic fairy tale. The article studies primary and secondary nominations of magic fairy tale personages and determines their stylistic, national and cultural potential. The study shows that the image of a character is formed through the use of nominations, whose semantics indicates certain attributes of the personage under consideration. These attributes include the character’s name, age, appearance, moral virtues, occupation and place of residence. Some nominations can have a number of positive meanings and play a pivotal role in shaping the ideal image of the protagonist. In magic fairy tales, antagonists are presented by means of nominations with negative semantics.

The article presents a description of the conceptual sphere with the basic concept of “winter”, based on the lyrical poetry of the famous Mansi poet Yuvan Shestalov. The article develops philological regionalism as a current trend in literary criticism. Based on a conceptual analysis of two volumes of the poet’s poems from his complete works, the article suggests this conceptual sphere, proving the objective choice of the nearest periphery concepts by providing examples from the texts. The immediate periphery includes such concepts and their variants as “snow” (ice, blizzard, snowstorm, snow squall); “sleep”; “night” (stars, moon); “road” (skis, sleds, deer, movement, path); “fire” (bonfire, flame, hearth heat, hot tea, ray of sunshine, northern lights). The key conclusion is that winter for the lyrical hero is a time of discovery, a time of learning new things, moving forward, a time of love and creativity. This perception of winter and Ugra as a whole is at odds with the generally accepted perception of the northern region. We believe the presented analysis will help visualize the mental space of the peoples from the North and the “winter” concept functions in the poet’s lyrical poetry to better understand his individual works, at the same time evaluating his work as an integral, mobile and developing system.

This article explores modern literary criticism as part of a cultural narrative, capable of constructing and structuring historical memory and creating myths. The article discovers the “plot” of successive forms of mythologization and demythologization of the past in criticism. In the 1990s, amid the collapse of the magazine circulation, nostalgic recollection of the (post) “thaw” became relevant as a myth of the “Golden Age”, which served a therapeutic function for literary criticism. The forms of nostalgia included memories of the time of youth, a return to the past, a view of it from “outside” and wistfulness for long bygone values. The 1990s were perceived as a time of crisis and catastrophe. Two decades later, criticism reversed from nostalgia to demythologization and destroyed the myth of the (post) “thaw” “Golden Age”. Mythologization is considered by the critics of the 2020s to be a dangerous way of thinking. At the same time, a tendency to build a new myth about the “golden time” is emerging: In the memories of the critics, the 1990s start losing negative associations and turn into an image symbolizing a decade of true freedom in the “Golden Age”. By creating and destroying myths, criticism tries to comprehend the modern sociocultural situation and its status. The past helps to discover the structure, order and patterns that allow understanding the present.

The article examines historical novels by the early 21 st century British writers where the authors turn to images of “internal” Others: Welsh, Irish and Scots. For each of these regions, we can identify topics that are associated specifically with them. Thus, the Welsh component is connected, first of all, with Celtic culture and social issues. Ireland is associated with religious theme, and Scotland is associated with a historical component. Edward Rutherfurd’s dilogy on Ireland “Dublin: Foundation” (2004) and “Ireland Awakening” (2006), presents the history of the Christianity development in Ireland. The writer emphasizes the continuity of paganism and Christianity. The following series of works analyzed in this article is dedicated to one of the most significant historical figures in Scotland, Robert the Bruce. The novels “Insurrection” (2010), “Renegade” (2012) and “Kingdom” (2014) examine the period of Scottish identity formation exemplified by King Robert and his opposition to the English monarchy. In Ken Follett’s trilogy “Century”, which includes “Fall of Giants” (2010), “Winter of the World” (2012) and “Edge of Eternity” (2014), we can note the socio-political issues associated, first of all, with the Welsh characters. At the same time, the idea common to all these works is the Celtic peoples’ community and their opposition to the English.

In Novalis’s works, the reaction of German Romanticism to the Enlightenment was civilizational: By the German world, both the French monarchy and Republic were viewed in a negative light. Thus, the Novalis’s philosophy developed the concept of national culture, which the movement “Storm and Onslaught”, led by J. G. Herder, opposed to French classicism of the 17^th–18^th centuries. According to Herder, the folk’s culture is formed through the psychological exploration of nature in myths and folklore, fixed in language. The “organic nature” of culture links folklore with the Middle Age and Modern poetry as the new forms of the dialogue with nature. This idea was consolidated by the figure of Faust, chosen by the Sturmers and Goethe as the hero of the “masterpiece” summarizing the national poetic path. Novalis elevated Catholicism to the cult of the earth, and the collective mind was connected with it by magic. He saw the institution of this union as an “ideal” Prussia where self-knowledge unites citizens, and the monarch unites the people and nature as an esoteric master. The French monarchy divided the people by cultivating selfishness. The prerequisites of this opinion were indicated by J. Le Goff and L. Karsavin who stated the existence of two types of cultures, which emerged as a result of the Roman conquest of Europe. For the national ones, who retained their languages and with them the connection with pre–Roman mythology and folklore, the introduced ancient norm and Christianity became forms of self-development. For the newly emerged unities west of the Rhine, they became the foundation of the cultural convention.

Nabokov is known as one of the unique phenomena in 20th century world literary history not only because of the unconditional significance of his creative legacy, but also because everything he wrote belongs equally to the history of two national literatures, Russian and American. So, researchers’ discussions about which of the national-literary paradigms V. Nabokov belongs to a greater extent are completely justified. As for our study, its aim is to analyze V. Nabokov’s public statements concerning his personal perception of one of the sides of his creative self, namely the status of “an American writer”. The object of the study is V. Nabokov’s interviews given by him to various publications from the 1950s to the 1970s. The study is based on V. Nabokov’s interviews from the book “Nabokov about Nabokov and Other Things: Interviews, Reviews, Essays” compiled by N. Melnikov. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that until now Nabokov’s interviews have not been analyzed comprehensively for the presence of statements identifying him as “an American writer”. In the course of analyzing Nabokov’s public statements about his “American writer” status, we concluded that this Nabokov’s position was based on his pragmatic strategy of anticipating the audience’s expectations, when he demonstrated accuracy in his identifying formulations and formal “nostalgia” for his estranged second homeland called the United States.

The article represents the experience of scientific reading of the novel works by the major Khanty prose writer E. Aipin from the perspective of mythopoetics. Witnessing the global changes at the turn of the 20^th–21^st centuries and being acutely aware of the crisis nature of the era, the writer introduces in his novels a number of eschatological myths, existing in the culture of the Khanty people and the cultures of other peoples, into the field of his interpretations. The author correlates the crisis phenomena inherent in the social consciousness of the millennium and expressed in environmental, socio-political and spiritual-moral shifts with the “eternal plots” of eschatological mythology, thereby bringing the eventual focuses of artistic narration to the level of general cultural and generally significant problems. The actualization of the eschatological context of Aipin’s novels is facilitated by the frequent use of concepts and artistic signs of catastrophic semantics: fire (“Khanty, or the Star of the Dawn”), death, destruction (“Mother of God in the Bloody Snows”), global flood (“In Search of the First Earth”), etc. In the process of the author’s understanding of the role and place of man in the modern world, there is an expansion of the scale of eschatological issues from novel to novel: from the ethnic to the universal level.

The article describes how gender and national aspects are constructed in late 19^th–early 20^th century British ghost stories. Both categories are seen within the context of the fearful Other so characteristic of the genre: deviations from the ideal of healthy British masculinity are perceived as potentially dangerous. It can be expressed as appearance of feminine or juvenile features gravitating towards heathen cults, and here gender is combined with the national: often a portion of non-British blood (e.g. Jewish or Italian) influences the choice of the particular cult and the way the protagonist’s appearance and manners change in the course of the narrative. All these phenomena are often complemented with the presence of animalistic features in the character, even if only metaphorically: any decline from masculinity and Christianity is perceived as a partial loss of humanity. Here, the influence of theories by Ch. Lombroso, M. Nordau, J. Fraser etc. is evident. But the authors of high quality stories (J. Buchan, A, Conan Doyle, E. F. Benson) do not preach these ideas straightforwarldly, they create original texts with quite ambivalent treatment of the topics discussed.

The article characterizes the concept of G. Derzhavin’s personality, which he constructs in his poetry. This concept is considered as an authorial myth, an author’s myth-making. In his poetry, Derzhavin creates an image that directly correlates with his life and personality. When creating many poems, he associated them with specific biographical facts; thus, in the artistic context and the author’s interpretation, the image of the lyrical hero in Derzhavin poetry acquires certain mythological features. The purpose of the study is to identify the key texts and cross–cutting principles that form the basis of G. Derzhavin’s authorial myth. The article analyzes his poems “Felica”, “Philosophers. Drunk and Sober”, “God”, “Monument”, “To Tonchiy”, “Freedom”, “To Myself”, “To Eugene. Zvanskaya's Life”, “Recognition”. As a result, the main aspects of G. Derzhavin’s authorial myth are revealed, in which Derzhavin appears to the reader as a statesman, poet, philosopher, landowner and an ordinary person with his inherent weaknesses. This myth is based on a moral position defined by such qualities as candor, truth and virtue. Derzhavin’s personality is represented in his authorial myth as the embodiment of a Russian person’s national qualities.

At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, the literary process of the USA demonstrates a steady move towards an organic fusion of fiction and nonfiction, on the one hand, and mythologization / demythologization of national history and images, on the other. This paper addresses mythologization of the image of the father in nonfiction novels “Unto the Sons” (1992) by G. Talese and “Patrimony: A True Story” (1991) by Ph. Roth. In their literary nonfiction, both G. Talese and Ph. Roth often turn to the problems of the search for national identity, which is connected with their origin. In the book “Unto the Sons”, G. Talese dwells upon the history of his family, focusing on the image of his father whom he presents as the embodiment of the national type of a self-made man. “Patrimony: A True Story” by Ph. Roth focuses on the serious illness and death of the writer’s father, which makes him plunge into philosophical reflections on life and death, national history and identity. Based on the material of these works, the article considers the synthesis of fiction and nonfiction in G. Talese’s and Ph. Roth’s creative work, in particular, in terms of transformation of a real person into a mythological figure.

The article examines the philosophical issues in Walker Percy’s novel “The Last Gentleman”, revealed in the author’s modeling of the plot development and in creating character images with conscious reliance on the provisions of Kierkegaard’s and Marcel’s existentialist philosophy. The main problem in the book centers round the desire of a person to find his own way in a situation of existential choice, the search for faith as the significant basis for human existence. The protagonist, Will Barrett, is put by the author into the situation of absolute freedom and is presented with the choice of various conceptual models of life, personified in the images of the people surrounding him: his father’s stoic ethics, Rita’s secular humanism, Val’s uncompromising religious faith, Sutter’s desperate nihilism. The turning point in Will’s life comes with his falling in love with Kitty: it changes his way of thinking, laying the foundation for the subsequent discovery of God. The article discloses the symbolic meaning of the character’s way in the novel: from a crowded metropolis to the open wilderness of southwestern deserts, from feeling lost to the discovery of faith, from loneliness to the search for the significant Other. The dynamic movement becomes the most important element in the novel, the character’s actual travelling through the country acquires the features of a spiritual journey to truth. Despite the absence of Will’s crucial inner transformation at the end of the novel, the author, in accordance with Marcel’s philosophical concept, gives paramount importance to the journey itself, regarding it as the main event that gives meaning to human life.

This article focuses on the processes of development and change in the philosophical and rhetorical genre of “Dialogues...” in Russian literature of the last quarter of the 18^th century. A given phenomenon goes back as far as the heritage of ancient thinkers; for instance, “Parallel Lives” by Plutarch was relevant to Russian writers of the years 1700-1800. Initially, under new conditions, the national writers were mostly interested in this genre by reason of the general problems of knowledge distribution as a metaphysical beginning of existence (A. Belobotsky, V. Tatitshev). By the last quarter of the 18^th century, a key aspect of consideration had been shifted to the issues of a new personal education and the state and moral doctrine of Russia. Mikhail Muraviev (1757 - 1807) was a famous Russian literary man and enlightener, the founder of sentimentalism and pre-romanticism in national literary culture, a philosopher and historian. In the years 1780-1790, on a personal invitation of Empress Catherine the Second, he taught moral philosophy and history to her grandchildren – tsesareviches Alexander and Constantine. It was the period when “Dialogues of the Dead” were contemplated as part of the writer’s teaching activities. M. Muraviev’s central goal was to show two key ideas: the development of Russia in Modern Period and the development of a new educated person.

Using a well-known allusion technique, the writer chose symbolic figures of the world history and culture, transferred two contrasting characters to one period of time and turned them into interlocutors, holding a discussion. Moreover, Russian public figures of different epochs could meet both the leaders of the world historical and cultural process and each other. So far, “Dialogues of the Dead” by M. Muraviev have been studied fragmentarily in scientific research. The researchers’ attention has been focused mainly on the range of sources used by the writer, as well as on some language features, style and general moral ideas of the outstanding Russian enlightener. According to our hypothesis, the original “myth of Russia” is in the centre of this work. The distinguishing features of this phenomenon are: firstly, the synthesis of various spheres of socio-cultural life, from policy to literary culture; secondly, a clear correlation of “the state glory” phenomenon with conceptions of the internal moral creed both of the ruler of the state and every man in the country.

The paper analyzes the specificity of imagological representation in the play “A Day in Turkey; or The Russian Slaves” (1791) by Hannah Cowley, a prominent English 18 th -century playwright. We consider the literary and historical-political contexts and pretexts of Cowley’s drama in connection with the most outstanding geopolitical events of the last decade of the 18 th century (the Great French Revolution, the Russian-Turkish War of 1787-1791) and outline a number of plays, which belong to the “oriental text” of English drama. A peculiar feature of the play “A Day in Turkey; or The Russian Slaves” is the realization of imagological heteroglossia as well as the interaction of particular national representations in the framework of political and feminist discourse. This interaction is analyzed based on the national images of Russia, Turkey and France, regarding the genre strategies of the play. Special attention is paid to “the Russian text” of the drama marked by a positive evaluation of the national hetero-image and the absence of imagological aggressiveness, which is quite natural in the case of rival countries. Russian personages carry the main ideological load of the play, embodying the author’s humanistic message.

This article examines the problem of depicting traumatic experiences in modern British literature based on H. Mantel’s novel “A Change of Climate” (1994). In the course of the trauma literature development and its research (trauma studies), new opportunities and ways of depicting a traumatic event in fiction appear, for example, the attention of writers shifts from a large-scale description of historical trauma to the private lives of certain people and individual traumas. Mantel’s work presents several traumatic events at once, but only one is actual – the loss of a child by the Eldred family during their missionary trip to South African. In addition to the “standard” devices of trauma literature (unreliable narrator, lacunae, etc.), H. Mantel also introduces a national component into the novel, which determines the specifics of the main characters’ traumatic experience. So, such concepts as family, religion, virtue, good manners and missionary work become important for the characters born and raised by English society, through the prism of these concepts they perceive reality and try to overcome their trauma. However, this trauma is not only a personal experience, but also a cultural one in a certain sense, since leaving Africa after the child’s death at the hands of aborigines shows the failure of their mission. Thus, in his novel, H. Mantel demonstrates how deeply English national character traits are rooted in people’s lives, and how they become an obstacle in overcoming a traumatic event.

The article analyzes L. Yuzefovich’s novel “Philhellene” from the point of view of its historical and mythological (mythopoetic) codes’ functions. The purpose of the work is to identify historical and mythological encodings in the novel, using descriptive and mythopoetic research methods. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the type of hero, the character system, as well as the identification of the novel chronotope and the justification of its genre characteristics. We argue that L. Yuzefovich’s novel is not a historical novel in the generally accepted sense. Although “Philhellene” has the necessary markers of the historical novel genre, L. Yuzefovich, through the category that we call “duality”, rises to the level of the symbolic generalization characteristic of myth. In his authorial myth, history, mythologized history, mythology, epic and legend coexist in one space, determining the originality of the novel world of “Philhellene”. We analyze the image of the main character, Mostsepanov who reveals a clear similarity with the image of the epic hero. In his wanderings, a mythopoetic chronotope is embodied through the prism of L. Yuzefovich’s authorial myth. The article states that L. Yuzefovich sees Greece’s path to prosperity through the merging of two related national identities – Russian and Greek – so Mostsepanov becomes the embodiment of this synthesis. As a result of the above statements, “Philhellene” can be characterized as a historical-mythological novel with a predominance of the mythological code.

The article examines the functional purpose of foreign cultural and religious mythologems in conveying an ethnic image in the Russian literary process of the 19th century. We analyze the reception of the confessional Muslim text in the artistic system of “Travels to Kazan, Vyatka and Orenburg in 1800” by M. Nevzorov who contributes to the description of the Tatar layer of life. Religious archetypal ideas are conveyed by means of religious-mythological codifiers, appearing in such a triad as the muezzin’s call to worship, the mullah’s sermon, the epigraphic inscriptions of tombstones representing the “Word of the Lord” and the prayerful appeal of believers as a confessional text. In the system of literary text, the apperception of a different religious consciousness creates a bright, unique image of Russian “foreign culture” in its dominant manifestations. In the works of P. Kudryashev and T. Belyaev, the ethnic Bashkir realities of life are identified by religious and historical mythologems: the constants of the Koranic paradise, “Sataniel” Dadzhal, “Bashkir people of seven generations” are involved in the interpretation of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 as an eschatological event in history. In conveying the ethnic aspects of life, A. Herzen and N. Leskov resort to pre-Christian mythologems of the pagan worldview: the national deities of the Mari and Udmurts are found in the creation of the Russian “past” in the article “Votyaki and Cheremis” and the essay “The Past and Thoughts.” In “The Enchanted Wanderer” by N. Leskov, the explication of pagan views on the world conveys the syncretism of the character’s worldview: the mythologems of the old Chuvash faith function in creating the image of the Chuvash on a par with Christian saints.

The article presents the assessment of S. Aksakov’s artistic heritage by English critics and writers. We prove that the Russian writer unites European cultures by using universal content. Along with the classics of Russian literature – I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky, S. Aksakov’s prose has worldwide significance. The year 1991 was declared by UNESCO the Year of Sergei Aksakov. Aksakov’s “The Family Chronicle” was translated into German by Sergei Rachinsky and was highly praised by A. Herzen. After James Duff translated Aksakov’s trilogy into English, the writer, along with Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gogol and Chekhov, entered the “golden fund of world literature”. The special interest to Aksakov in England was noticeable both in the early 20^th century and in the 1980, when his works became bestsellers along with the works of famous Victorians. The article reveals the role of Dmitry Mirsky in popularizing Russian classics, as well as Virginia Woolf, according to whose testimony books by Russian authors Aksakov, Chekhov Turgenev and Dostoevsky found the most enthusiastic response among English readers. The article also touches upon the translation specifics of Aksakov’s works into English.

This article considers the myth of the angel in the poetry of A. Polezhaev, a representative of the socalled “God-fighting” romanticism. The image of an angel was quite frequent in the poetry of Russian romantics in the first half of the 19 th century, in particular, it was most traditionally and fully represented in the poetry of V. Zhukovsky who worked within the framework of Christian Romanticism. Polezhaev, on the other hand, comes to consider this image from a God–fighting position, and his image of an angel is artistically comprehended through the prism of the opposition “Beauty – Death”, which is not only typical, but also meaningful for Polezhaev’s poetry. The image of an angel acquires several incarnations in A. Polezhaev's poetry: it can be comprehended through the image of a beautiful beloved endowed with angelic beauty; Polezhaev also refers to the traditional image of an angel messenger of God, but embodies it differently, through the plot of fallen angels rejected by their creator. In addition, the features of the traditional image of an angel in Polezhaevsky poetry are given to a demon capable of bringing not destruction and death, but inspiration. Thus, we can say that the God-fighting motifs in his work manifest themselves atypically and in a peculiar way, the protagonist makes attempts to fight with God both through the image of an angel, including an inverted one, and through beauty.

The article presents the mythopoetic analysis of the story “Waiting for the First Snow” (1979) by the Khanty prose writer E. D. Aipin and characterizes the mythopoetic image of the protagonist. The object of the study is the cultural hero archetype, widely spread in any mythology, which allows us to talk about the ways of the classical cultural myth creative interpretation in the modern prose of the Khanty peoples. The protagonist’s activity in this story, like that of the mythological cultural hero, is aimed at maintaining the natural order of things, protecting the sacred land of the ancestors. The violation of taboos and the departure from the usual way of life is a kind of reflection of the hero’s initiation. In E. Aipin’s story, the protagonist, in accordance with the mythological structure, three times breaks the ancient precepts in search of his own meaning of life. The hunt for a new beast oil becomes a test of his strength and a means of personality formation. Mythopoetic images transmit the peculiarities of national culture, reflect the experience and traditions of the indigenous people. The use of archetypal and mythopoetic images is intertwined with the gradual disclosure of the protagonist’s character psychology, which indicates the author’s transformation of the archetypal image of the bogatyr in the story “Waiting for the First Snow”.

This article examines samples of the Tatars’ non-fairy tale prose, which reflects the historical figure of the popular uprising leader in the Urals and the Volga Region, Yemelyan Pugachev. The author summarizes the popular assessment of the Peasant War leader’s actions, found in the historical tales of the Tatars from the republics of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and other regions of Russia. Based on the analyzed sources, it is possible to obtain valuable information about those socio-political clashes that have left deep traces in the worldview and psychology of the local population. The relevance of the research topic is due to the need to understand the role of one of the key personalities for the Bashkortostan Tatars, Yemelyan Pugachev, as well as the need to replenish the knowledge about the local history specifics and the national policy of the tsarist government. The object of the study is the Tatar people’s historical tales about uprisings and riots. The subject of the study is the image of Yemelyan Pugachev in Tatar historical tales. The purpose of the work is to identify the features reflecting the image of Yemelyan Pugachev in Tatar tales and the prerequisites that form the basis of the popular assessment of this hero’s deeds. The objectives of the article are to review historical tales about popular uprisings, unrest and riots and their leader, to identify the specifics, reflecting people’s indignation based on the transformation of the dissenter’s image, an opponent of state power in the oral folk art of the Tatars living in various regions of Russia, in particular in the Volga Region and the Urals. The article concludes that despite the strengths and weaknesses of Yemelyan Pugachev’s personality, the people portray him with respect, recognizing his strength and charisma, but they are in no hurry to take the “oath of allegiance”; at the same time, through the description of everyday events, he reveals himself, first of all, as a Person.

This article studies the national and psychological aspects of corporeality in the novella “On Chesil Beach” (2007) by I. McEwan. The research identifies the existence of national specificity of the bodily and finds ways to convey this in literature. The main themes of the novella are the prohibition of a frank conversation about sexual anxieties, the difference of temperaments and the motif of shame. The novella presents the “borderline” era of English society in the 1960s, the time when ignorance of one’s body and naïveté negatively affected human destinies. The awareness of one’s own physicality due to contact with the body of the Other is an essential aspect of the novella. We have established that I. McEwan demonstrates the impact of the national and psychological aspects on the bodily relationships of the characters in his novella “On Chesil Beach”. The characters’ isolation, their inability to interact with the Other, is part of the national character: I. McEwan’s characters live their lives “from within”, each of them is focused only on themselves and on their own feelings. Due to the Puritanical upbringing and the entire English system of values, the characters are unable to interact with the body of the Other, which entails difficulties in their relationships.

This article discusses the “identity” theme in the novel “Monkey Boy” by Francisco Goldman; the author has an unconventional approach to the image creation as he considers the identity to be a complicated multidimensional phenomenon. The research is aimed at exploration of the hybrid-type identity in the novel. There are some issues connected with the analysis of that kind of character. The first aspect is to understand whether there is the core part of identity; the next point is to clarify the process of accepting identity and the last aspect is to enumerate the factors that influence the self-identification process. The character of that identity-type can never be included into the group of Ours; he hasn’t got the feeling of “being at home”, that’s why the protagonist searches for the place of residence, which would not be connected to his national and ethnic roots. The author shows the hybrid identity through the language as there are Spanish words and phrases in the American-English text. The non-linear narration helps the readers to observe the stages of self-identification, to analyze the traumatic memories and the process of getting over these experiences. The protagonist accepts different elements of his identity by interacting with the Other when he gets to know things and asks the Other questions; as a result, he develops his own way of self-identification and finds solutions to his internal problematic issues. The research of the auto-images and hetero-images is controversial since the character simultaneously belongs to both communities.

The purpose of this article is to study the constituent elements of the English national myth, embodied in the novel “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clark (2004). The work gained genuine success immediately after its appearance, but the reasons for this success have not been investigated to date. The literary criticism focused mainly on the way S. Clarke followed the English literary tradition associated with the names of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Walter Scott and other writers of the 19^th century. The article traces S. Clark’s skill to handle different sides of the national myth, presented in the novel, by creating characteristic images, typical forms of private and public existence, images of English ethnopsychology, etc. S. Clark introduces into the narrative the oppositions characteristic of the national myth: “we – they”, “friend – foe”, defining the plot conflicts. The result of this is an absolute harmony of the novel pathos with the hypostases of modern English consciousness and an artistic summation of England’s place in the world, its role in human history.

The article studies the book as a special type of artistic unity, representing an original model for expressing artistic consciousness in modern Russian literature abroad. The article proves the productivity of this genre phenomenon, identifies the main trends in book creation associated with an appeal to the sacral text, with the actualization of the autobiographical, diary and memoir prose traditions. The representative sample is analyzed on the basis of the modern literary scholarship provisions, which conceptualize the book as an original genre phenomenon. Using the example of E. Margolis’ book “Venice. Quarantine Chronicles” (2020), we analyze the mechanisms of constructing the artistic world, organically embodied in book format. The article reveals the nature of the artistic integrity of the book, conditioned by the interaction of verbal and visual components, the motif complex associated with the Christian tradition (which includes motifs of insight, internal movement, silence and healing of the soul), and reveals the features of the palimpsest, which serves as the principle of genre modeling. The conceptual and formal anchor in the book is the image of Venice, which connects everyday and metaphysical, visible and invisible aspects. The article proves that the book represents a form of the world harmonization and a space for a dialogue between different cultural codes at whose junction the author’s hybrid identity is formed.

The article deals with the novel “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006) by the African-American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The writer shows different components of the identification process in the modern multicultural world. The main historical event of the novel is the Civil War of 1967-1970, which took place due to political and ethnic struggle. It was caused by numerous attempts by the southeastern provinces of Nigeria to secede and form the Republic of Biafra. The novel shows how the interethnic conflict between the Hausa and Igbo peoples, and later the war, influence not only the fate of the characters, but also the peculiarities of their identification process. This process is represented by three components: ethnic, national and gender. Kainene and Odenigbo, whose ethnicity is formed and recognized with the emergence of a new republic, feel, first, not as Nigerians, but as Igbos. Therefore, they take an active part in the Civil War. British interest in the war is shown through the characters of Susan and Richard who demonstrate typical colonial attitudes towards Africans. However, Richard’s interest in African culture contributes to the process of realizing the ethnic identity of Ugwu who chooses a member of the African community for his role model. Olanna, representing a new generation of Nigerian women, destroys the traditional forms of gender relations in Nigerian reality.

The article studies Kashshaf Patii’s work, identifying the development features of his poetry in the context of literary and aesthetic thought of the early twentieth century. As research shows, the educational paradigm contributes to the formation of a poetic concept of the world, the concept of a lyrical hero and motifs in his works. Tracing the main trends in the development of Kashshaf Patii’s poetry and the main periods of his work, we identify the features of the development of national literature of the early twentieth century as a whole and determine general and specific aspects in the patterns of the national literary art development. This determines the relevance of our work. It is for the first time that the work of Kashshaf Patii has become the object of a systematic study and literary analysis. It is the first study about the life and creative biography of the poet. As a result of the study, we conclude that Patii’s first works put forward the idea of developing Tatar society on the basis of education, knowledge and culture; their dominant motif is Tatar society’s call for social transformation. At the same time, romantic techniques predominate in the artistic and aesthetic aspects. This indicates that the poet’s work belongs to educational romanticism. At the second stage of his work, the author reflects on the mission of the poet and poetry in the context of classical romanticism - on the highest values in the world, while serving the nation is interpreted as divine predestination. The alienated lyrical hero, experiencing loneliness, comes to the fore in his philosophical lyrical poetry.

The innovative development of modern education continues to move towards the adoption of information technologies. However, there is no significant increase in the quality of education due to their implementation; the process is much slower than expected. We face a problem of integration of educational information technologies and pedagogical technologies. It has become especially relevant in connection with the rapidly developing practice of using neural networks and the scientific and methodological substantiation of their effectiveness at different levels and stages of learning. In this regard, the purpose of the present study is to identify the potential opportunities and risks of using neural networks in education.

The practical part of the work consists of an analysis and synthesis of both foreign and domestic statistical studies regarding existing trends in the implementation of AI in the field of education. The article presents the results of a survey, conducted among university students, to identify the advantages and limitations of using generative artificial intelligence in learning. Based on the SWOT analysis, the article provides generalized conclusions regarding the strengths and weaknesses, risks and threats of using neural networks in education.

The data obtained can be used to organize further research and more effective use of the neural network technology in educational practices for both teachers and students.

The relevance of the article is justified by the popularization of linguo-information technologies in education and their necessity in language teaching. This study identifies the potential of linguo-information technologies in teaching foreign language oral communication at a university. In this research, it is understood as teaching speaking, which is the aim of this study. Research methods include the analysis of theoretical sources, generalization and systematization of the key concepts and exercise modeling. A literature review on the research topic established that the current generation of students belong to the generation of digital natives, which affects the modern language teaching characteristics. The linguo-informational approach is significant to teaching language, consequently, linguo-information technologies are relevant. The article proposes a definition of linguo-information technologies for teaching foreign languages. To explore the potential of linguo-information technologies, we chose the neural network Gliglish.

The practical part of the research involved exploring and analyzing the functionality of the Gliglish. While creating a system of exercises, we designed tasks of imitation and substitution to develop pronunciation, lexis and grammar skills, using this neural network, and described the methodology for working with these exercises. The outcome of the research revealed the potential of Gliglish in developing speech skills and abilities of students in a university.

The article considers Longread as a tool for implementing the Edutainment technology in the theory and practice of teaching extensive reading in EFL classes. Taking into account the purpose and objectives of the study, we formulate the definitions of the terms Edutainment and Longread, typologize their components, provide their creation algorithms and offer methodological recommendations for conducting classes based on the Edutainment technology. The article describes a model of teaching reading with the help of Longreads. The research findings confirm that teaching to read Longreads fits into the concept of the Edutainment technology and aims at developing skills of working with large amounts of information. This approach may contribute to the formation of students’ linguistic and communicative competencies, as well as to the development of a sustainable motivation to learn a foreign language. We choose a theoretical analysis of scientific literature, a content analysis of pedagogical literature, questionnaires, experiment, mathematical data processing, analyses of personal empirical experience of teaching foreign languages as the leading methods of the research. The scientific and practical evidence, presented in this article, may inspire EFL teachers to adopt the model of teaching extensive reading with the help of Longreads for their students’ and their own benefit.