The article studies native English speakers’ verbal and non-verbal associations with the concepts of HARM and UTILITY. The study is based on the associative experiment that took place in the form of an online poll among 82 respondents. The verbal associations form the basis for outlining the key features of the concepts which are described in the article. As for the first concept, HARM, it is associated with something intentionally causing physical and psychological pain, and the consequences of these actions, including negative emotions and potential danger. As for the concept of UTILITY, it has got the following associative features: something being applicable in order to perform certain functions and gain some benefit for it. The non-verbal associations, in their turn, provide additional information about the image of the concepts under consideration, presented by means of colors, associated with the concepts of HARM and UTILITY. As for HARM, red and black were very common, and as to UTILITY, the participants mostly chose blue, green and white. In conclusion, the article describes the differences between the concepts under discussion and states that even though their verbal associations are not antonymous, there is a clear opposition of black and white colors chosen by the respondents.

   The article describes functions of the strategies and tactics of linguistic persuasion in the counter-cultural rock-discourse.

   The aim of the study is to identify the tactics and means of linguistic persuasion at the macrolevel of counter-cultural rock discourse. The means of linguistic persuasion, determined by the history of the movement, are widely used in songs of different rock-bands. The origins of rock-music are in the music of the U.S. black population, i. e. blues and jazz, which eventually developed into rock’n’roll and rock. The song lyrics raised political, economic and social problems of modern society. The most important and distinctive function of rock-discourse is its appellative, or persuasive function. The material, subjected to discourse analysis in the present research, is the lyrics of the counter-culture album “Drones” by the British rock-band “Muse”. All the songs of the album are united both by the topic of opposition to the total government control and by the common plot. The paper focuses on the main elements of the album’s macrostructure such as its cover, titles of the songs and contents. The analysis of all these elements reveals the main strategy of the album – the Confrontation strategy. The means of the strategy are targeted at the group of the audience called ‘they’ to denounce, blame and offend them.

   The article considers lexical ways of expressing attitudes to the named object in the novel “Black City” by Boris Akunin. We focus on nicknames and pseudonyms, which traditionally perform not so much identifying as characterizing and stylistic functions in fiction. Nicknames and pseudonyms, being a secondary nomination of a person, are intended to emphasize his or her individuality, true or desirable character traits and behavior. These functions are clearly manifested in the artificially created reality of a literary work. In a literary text, we find both the laws of linguistics, according to which onyms are created and function, and the laws of poetics, through which proper names enter into semantic-stylistic relations with other linguistic units, performing text-forming and stylistic functions, and participating in the character image formation. All of them, their forms, meanings and associations, become inseparably connected with the author’s idea; so to deeper penetrate into it, we need to analyze the onomastic vocabulary. We have divided the collected material into two groups: nicknames and pseudonyms. The criterion for dividing these concepts is the authorship of the name: nicknames are usually invented by other people, while pseudonyms are created by the people themselves. In each group, the analysis of the characters’ secondary names is carried out using the data from the text of the novel and, if necessary, extra-linguistic information is used, as well as the information from other texts in the Erast Fandorin series. If possible, the article provides motivation for the nomination of each name. At the end of the article, conclusions are drawn on the semantic and stylistic role of nicknames and pseudonyms in the text of the novel, we show their link to the plot line of the work and determine the role of the secondary nomination in expressing the attitude to the named object in the fictional text.

   The study of expressive word formation in the works of writers and poets, their idiostyle and the issues of occasionality are important areas of modern linguistics. The phenomenon of emotions has found a vivid reflection in the Russian language at various levels. Expression occupies an important place in the axiological (evaluative) language picture of the world; therefore, there are quite a lot of works devoted to the study of emotional-evaluative words as a means of representing the worldview of masters of the word. The study of expressive word formation in the language of modern poetry helps to understand the complex cognitive process of the author’s interaction with the world. The research into this phenomenon in the language of various writers and poets makes it possible to identify similarities and differences in the linguistic consciousness of the individuals in question. The article analyses derivative formations that have an emotional coloring in the language of modern poetry. The new trend of poetic word creation studies both well-known word-formation models and occasional ones. The article characterizes emotionally colored words, formed in a suffixal way, using the methods of word-formation, semantic and contextual analyses. Among them are derivative units with suffixes –chik-, -shchik-, -k-, -ok-, -ot- and occasional derivatives with the studied morphemes. The study is based on the poetic texts of the turn of the 20th-21st centuries; in particular, we studied the works of Oleg Chukhontsev and Natalia Gorbanevskaya. Expressive word formation in the authors’ poetic language reflects both their intentions, ways of thinking, mood and feelings, and describes the style and content of their poetic text. By analyzing the literary texts of these poets we study language personalities in the context of the modern era and trace the expressivization features of their language at the turn of the century.

   The article deals with the transformation of the Medieval Slavs’ linguistic image of the world. We focus on the formation of new and meaningful adjustments to traditional Slavic concepts that appeared under the influence of Christianization. Relying on the analysis of the superword units, extracted from the Slavonic manuscripts of the Middle Ages, we can identify the sets of units that entered the fields of verbalizers of changing fragments of the Slavic language picture of the world under the influence of the new faith, or formed fields of verbalizers that emerged due to the rejection of the pagan religion. Particular attention is paid to the process of the Slavs’ acquisition of the lexeme благодать and its variant благодъть. Being a unique invention of Cyril and Methodius, this analogue of the Greek word χαρις began to play the role of the name for the new concept, which conveyed a complex philosophical concept. The article proves that the concept благодать held a central place in the Medieval Slavs’ linguistic world image and its verbalizers, creating an extensive word-forming nest, which harmoniously fitted into the Slavic language system and “established contacts” with the verbalizers of the traditional Slavic concepts “Любы”, “Добро”, “Миръ”, “Въра”, “Богъ”, etc.

   In modern anthropological linguistics, one of the most relevant areas of research is the study of various linguistic means that express the inner world of a person in literary texts. Among all the linguistic means of interpreting emotions, lexical means occupy a key place, they are the main ways of cognition, conceptualization, evaluation and explanation of the human psychological activity. The study of verbalization features of emotive space at the lexical level in the works of I. Turgenev has not been extensively and universally addressed. In this regard, this article studies, in the functional- semantic aspect, emotive vocabulary in the novel “Rudin” by I. Turgenev. Our research explores theoretical problems, associated with the terminological apparatus of emotiology, and analyzes the state of modern scientific research in the field of the language emotive meaning. In addition, the study contains observations on the means of conceptualization and verbalization of emotions and on the classification of emotive vocabulary according to the categorical-lexical seme. The language units in the novel “Rudin” both convey the emotional experience of the characters and help to realize the emotive background and tonality of the work, making the emotional expression of the work more figurative, which allows the reader to better understand the inner world of the characters and the author.

   The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the writer’s representation in a public space, exemplified by the Kazan poet, Gavriil Petrovich Kamenev, who worked at the turn of the18^th–19^th centuries. The first part of the article analyzes the writer’s place in the historical, cultural and scientific context from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries, before the widespread use of the Internet as the main source of information in society. We have found that Kamenev did not get his rightful place in the historical and literary process, either in the works of philologists or in the mass consciousness. The only exceptions were such sources as the works on local history and the works of researchers connected to Kazan, in particular, E. Bobrov. The second part of the article presents the methodology and describes the tools for collecting data from search sites about the presence of the writer’s identity on the Internet. Among other things, the article postulates that the main means of analyzing the modern public perception of creative personality aspects are queries in search engines. The statistical data, collected from the analysis of the search engine output and content, provide information about the number of open resources, structure and content. The used methodology can be applied to other public personalities, primarily writers.

   The article discusses some issues related to transcription as a genre-style form. The author believes that literary transcription (often terminologically referred to as a paraphrase) is a completely independent, autonomous semantic construction, which specifically combines both the elements of translation and original work. Transcription is neither a retelling in the elementary meaning of this word, nor a free translation, but a more complex verbal and aesthetic whole. Translation, with all the reservations, can be attributed to “abstract translation” – the concept and term introduced and substantiated by M. L. Gasparov. Transcription is characterized by two main properties: transcoding within the boundaries of one natural language and the subjective principle, which manifests itself in the selection of a specific material, its structuring according to a certain compositional plan, linguistic processing of text – in a word, in the authorial cementation of the work. Undoubtedly, biblical psalms are a vivid example of literary transcription. The tradition of their “transposition”, their paraphrastic development, is quite old, dating back more than one century. In short (because of the vastness and depth of the theme), the history of psalter arrangements is traced (within the Russian cultural system, but with an ex-course-reference to the Ukrainian one, which found its expression, in particular, in the work of T. G. Shevchenko). In addition, the article highlights the correlative measure of translation and transcription in the poetic psalter practices and describes modern transcriptions (based on one example). For experimental purposes, we actively search for new approaches to transcribing psalms, besides studying the existing ones. One of such approaches may be the connection of psalms, as a Middle Eastern lyrical hymnography, with the Quranic tradition (based on the Russian literary language). The article consists of three parts. The first is a general one (about the problem of transcription as a genre). The second is “its subject matter” (about the psalms in terms of their arrangements). The third is an appendix, in which I present my own transcriptions of the psalms based on the methodology outlined in general terms.

   The article deals with the modern artistic representation of the national aspect in Russian literature and discusses the stages of forming new approaches to the conceptualization of national meanings in the literature at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. We consider the dependence of constructing the problem of the national in the 1990s and the 2000s on the existing mechanisms of national modeling. At the same time, the article traces the creation of a special situation, in which, in one time period, the reflection of post-colonial, national and post-Soviet problems are combined, setting the specifics of national conceptualization in Russian literature of the next decade. The article proves the inclusion of post-colonial/decolonial language into the process of national conceptualization; in some cases, it leads to the functionalization of national meanings, in others, it emphasizes new ways of national self-identification associated with estazis. In the works of this kind, we have ascertained an increase in the importance of the body code, which represents one of the sense perception options. It can be argued that the problem of constructing national meanings in modern Russian literature is associated not so much with the process of its conceptualization and restructuring, but with searches in the field of the language for describing the national aspect. In this case, post-colonial and post-Soviet discourse, as well as decoloniality, are beginning to play a key role.

   The paper discusses the plot functioning of the frontier in “Blood Meridian” – an anti-Western novel by the contemporary American author C. McCarthy – through the concept of “regeneration through violence”, which means forming identity as a result of the use of force. The concept is reflected in the classic Western, which legitimizes the colonial activity in the fight against the Other – Native Americans and nature. McCarthy consistently deromanticizes the national myth of the noble and valiant pioneers, revealing and explicating the cultural trauma of colonization incorporated into the American national identity. Deconstruction is carried out through the use of Southern Gothic imagery and a special type of narrative that transcends the ethical. The Western traditionally includes the forces of nature in the process of frontier confrontation, and the revisionist approach excludes nature from the sphere of human control. The incessant war of all against all, unfolding on the frontier, is opposed in the novel by the idea of non-violent interaction with nature, which, much later, takes shape in the form of the “dark ecology” conception. By analyzing the novel, we have found that the constantly reproduced in American culture trauma of colonization can be survived through the recognition of the traumatic experience and analytical work.

   Russian literature of the Silver Age is characterized by rethinking of mythology and mythmaking, which allows the writers, in the changed conditions, to portray man and the world around him in a new way. A special role in this process is played by the biblical myth.

   The aim of the article is to identify the representation features of the Old and New Testament stories in the Middle Eastern narrative by the writer and journalist S. Kondurushkin.

   The author analyzes the system of biblical characters, the specifics of interpretation of the stories, the nature of their transformations and the importance of introducing the carnival-comic component in the text, based on the stories “Moses” and “The Descendants of the King of Judea”. The article emphasizes the role of the Middle Eastern landscape, which, for Kondurushkin, serves as a link between the mythohistorical past of the biblical East and the present of Palestine and Syria. The use of the biblical myth in Kondurushkin’s Middle Eastern narrative significantly expands his artistic possibilities. From the relatively simple schemes of a travel essay and an eyewitness account, he moves to a complex system of images from the past and present, “big narratives” unfolding against the background of the mountainous landscapes of Syria and Palestine, which are familiar to the author and his readers. The biblical imagery remains one of Kondurushkin’s most important artistic devices in his articles and essays on the First World War and the Revolution of 1917.

   Modern literary criticism exists in a changing field of literature, whose boundaries are fuzzy and fluid. Critics gather up their object of knowledge, limit literary facts, set limits, conceptually formulate the boundaries of phenomena. The boundary is an important concept that allows comprehending, epistemologically and ontologically, the phenomenon of literary criticism, which is dramatically experiencing its loss of the former high authoritative status in the literary field and the impossibility of applying the old tools of interpretation and evaluation to the latest literature.

   The purpose of this article is to reveal the forms of constructing boundaries as ways of being and cognition in criticism and metacriticism. Our work is based on literary-critical articles, published in “thick” journals from 2000 to 2022.

   The study has led to the conclusion that the designation of the boundaries of “one’s own” field in criticism performs, firstly, an identifying role, defining a group community; secondly, it has an ontological meaning as a definition of the framework of existence. Gnoseologically demanding mental procedures are: conceptualizing, defining the phenomenon boundaries, going beyond the boundaries of the past-present, present-future and the evaluative (ethical) approach to the text (author) through oppositions. The article reveals the difference between the epistemological approaches of patriotic critics and liberals who carry out the designation procedure.

   The article deals with the category of boundary in the science-fiction novel of the English writer, philologist and theologist C. S. Lewis “That Hideous Strength” (written in 1945). This is the third novel of C. S. Lewis’ “The Space Trilogy”: “Out of the Silent Planet” (1938), “Perelandra” (1943) and “That Hideous Strength” itself. The researchers suppose that the genres of all three novels present the combination of science fiction and fantasy. Considering the plot and the images, the theme of the boundary is crucial for these novels, but in comparison with the conventional one, the paradigm “cosmos/chaos” is changed almost everywhere; the Earth (“home”) is presented as fallen and separated from the whole Space. This point of view is typical for Lewis’ historical, literary and theological works. In general, we can see this division in “That Hideous Strength”; nevertheless, its plot is based on the national myth, the legend about King Arthur; at the same time, in the context of the Arthurian legend, there is a conventional paradigm. Surrounded by the hostile world, the idyllic manor of St. Anne’s, where the positive characters live, turns out to be the representation of a “core” of Britain, its essence that is called Logres in the reality of the novel.

   The article deals with the problem of the boundary as an aesthetic and ontological component of plotbuilding in E. Radzinsky’s play “The Executioner, or Conversations on the Way to the Guillotine”. In all Radzinsky’s plays, regardless of the subject matter and genre characteristics, there are, as it were, two spaces: the external attitude to the character (in this case, the space of historical precedents) and the internal one, the space of moral choice, the existential one. The displacement or destruction of the boundaries of these spaces, the overcoming of “dualism”, to which the character of the play is doomed, creates the specifics of the conflict and its implementation in the plot of the play. In E. Radzinsky’s plays-parables, where the text is organized with the help of a reliable or unreliable historical document, contradictions of the personal order are projected onto the world order of society. In the play “The Executioner, or Conversations on the Way to the Guillotine”, E. Radzinsky creates a text organized by expanding it with other texts, which allows him to expose and remove the boundaries between fiction and authenticity, between the reflection of art and life in the play. This projection doubles in the play chosen for our analysis: the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the “great terror” are revealed based on the events of the Great French Revolution and its “great terror”. Thus, in the play under consideration, “a text within a text” technique is used, which creates numerous combinations, intersections and collisions of semiotic meanings that multiply and complicate the concept of boundaries. A text frame can be the unifying and structuring principle of such a mosaic text. The semantic framework of the play is the story of Meyerhold and Zinaida Reich’s last days. Thus, we can say that the playwright first creates and then destroys the boundaries between a historical document and a historical hoax, between art and reality.

   Memory and trauma studies are among the main points of interest in the modern literary process, as they allow (re)comprehending and artistically reworking the accumulated social and historical experience from the fictional point of view. Although the methodology of interpreting historical memory and collective (or personal) trauma in realistic literature is being studied in detail, fictional artistic worlds rarely fall into the sphere of research interest.

   The purpose of our work is to analyze the methods of historical and cultural reception within the framework of the fantasy metagenre, which does not have mandatory “text outputs” into reality.

   Based on the novels “The Poppy War” by Rebecca F. Kuang and “Jade City” by Fonda Lee, the article proves that, even placed in the framework of a secondary artistic reality, the events of real history continue to function as a means of cognizing identity and selfhood at social, national, ethnic, religious, gender and other levels. A separate point of reception of the real in the novels is the comprehension of feminist problems, which are complicated for the Asian conservative world. Two focal characters – Rin in “The Poppy War” and Shae in “Jade City” – search for their place in society and its hierarchical structure and fight against outdated patriarchal foundations.

   The article deals with ghost stories written by Marjorie Bowen. The legacy of this interesting author has seldom been analyzed by Gothic scholars. She wrote ‘scary’ stories characterized by meticulous details, masterly composition and historical background. Her characters are often from dysfunctional families (which often seems more important than the supernatural elements) and the descriptions are quite graphic for a ghost story. Bowen’s tales provide a researcher with a wealth of material concerning a typically Gothic theme of boundaries – between the male and the female (gender ambivalence), the living and the dead, the natural and the supernatural. They are almost intentionally devoid of ethical problems in the common sense of the word, skillfully crafted, and, most importantly, they first make the reader notice not only the traditional Gothic plot, but also the moments of transition when the characters reveal their true self, and in this respect they closely resemble psychological sketches. The focus is on how the characters react, how the circumstances make their inner essence clear – and against the richly detailed historical background. The above-mentioned features are analyzed in the following stories: “The Crown Derby Plate”, “The Housekeeper”, and “Kecksies”.

   “The Siberian indigenous people issue” is a complex of relations between Russian colonizers of Siberia and its indigenous population. The article considers it as a factor determining the regional identity of Russian Siberians and the specificity of the Siberian text. This issue is structurally important for the spiritual literature of Siberia. The article covers the development of the natives’ image from the works of the 17^th – early 18^th centuries (“Yesipov’s Chronicle” and “A Brief Description of the Ostyak People” by G. Novitsky, one of the first missionary travelogues) to similar texts of the late 19^th century, such as “Traveling Notes” by Archbishop Nil (N. F. Isakovich). The missionary travelogue is a version of the imperial colonizing travelogue, with its characteristic opposition of “ours” and “theirs” and the desire for the mental and physical appropriation of space and its transformation. At the same time, the texts reflect two approaches to colonization – the total Russification of the indigenous population and their Christianization while preserving their national languages and culture. Particularly noteworthy are the works by indigenous priests, such as the “Memorable Testament” by Archpriest Michael Chevalkov. These texts are a rare example of the 19^th century autochthonous literature, reflecting the process of the local intelligentsia formation. The problem of cultural dialogue is transferred in them into the realm of internal psychological and existential conflict and the author’s self-determination in relation to his own ethno-confessional identity. Pre-revolutionary Siberian missionary literature is not yet sufficiently in demand as an object of philological research. By referring to it, we expand the source base for the study of the Siberian text. It allows us to identify new axiological meanings introduced by representatives of the clergy in the formation of Siberian identity.

   The article opens a cycle of publications devoted to the debatable problem of interaction between modern literature and folklore. A particular example - the work of the writer and screenwriter A. Rubanov, actualizes an important area of philological research: folklorism of literature in the intermedia era. The desire to comprehend the existing trends within the framework of this literary process paradigm involves the analysis of representative texts, the novel “Finist the Bright Falcon” being its sample. The writer draws the images, plot, motifs from the fairy-tale-mythological fund, setting the ethical and aesthetic coordinate system. He uses the resources of artistic expression, which are characteristic not only of literature, but also of cinema: a folk tale becomes a series, based on the fairy tale motifs, while the representation of folklore images makes the reader perceive the type of folklorism, revealed in Rubanov’s text, as art-folklorism. Its characteristic feature is the author’s use of the folklore source and the actualization of the folklore principle in literature in a special way, namely, based on the codes of other types of art – painting, music, cinema, etc. This type of assimilation of folklore material demonstrates the permeability of the boundaries not only of folklore and literature, but also of art in general.

   The article examines the image of a sage in Tatar oral folk art and Tatar literature. The image is considered in several aspects: according to the genre originality and the figurative system. In Tatar folk tales, it appears as a wise old father, a wise girl and a soldier; in dastans – a narrator-zhyrau; in the works of ancient literature, we find the images of the sage Khozyr Ilyas, in modern prose – the Grandfather of Light. The problem of the hero is one of the most important in the system of literary and theoretical categories. Although there is a well-established idea of the main features characterizing this concept, its diversity and ambiguity leave room for controversy. The article, based on the analysis of critical works of literary and literary-journalistic genres, reveals the inconsistency of judgments, indicating the reasons for the objective and subjective approaches of the authors of these works and various views in the artistic and aesthetic interpretations of the contemporary authors’ works.

   The article examines philosophical problems in William Gass’s novel “Omensetter’s Luck” that manifest themselves both in the character creation and in the ideological and conceptual design of the artistic whole. For William Gass as a writer, who was formed under the influence of Wittgenstein’s ideas, linguistic reality is the only reality accessible to human perception. Omensetter, the character in the novel, not endowed by the author with fully developed speech skills, comes to be regarded as a being who has not yet acquired a human essence, a material fact that the people around him should interpret at their discretion. On the other hand, attempts of the “speaking” characters to overcome language, to go beyond the boundaries of language into the realm of silence are also regarded by the author as the destruction of human nature, which is demonstrated by characters like Henry Pimber and Jethro Ferber in the climactic moments of the novel. As a result, the human essence inevitably becomes delineated by the boundaries of the verbal. At the same time, the latter can be constructed in various ways, having both destructive and creative consequences, the two perspectives being demonstrated in the novel by the examples of three narrators and their different verbal consciousnesses that manifest their essence through an attempt to comprehend Omensetter’s presence in their reality.

   This article studies the plot of creation transformation (the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea) in modern women’s prose of the mid-2000s. The aim of the research is to explore the problem of traditional plot deconstruction and to identify parallels between the two novels that were published almost simultaneously. The study is based on two novels, written in the middle of the decade: “2017” by O. Slavnikova and “The Surgeon” by M. Stepnova. The research focuses on the construction of central images, the concepts of “false” and “true” female identity built by the male protagonist, as well as on the ways of representing them in the text. These texts demonstrate how the traditional female archetypes, imposed by patriarchal culture, become a source of trauma for both the woman and the male creator, while the woman inevitably acquires monstrous features, which leads to a shift in the emphasis between “living and dead”. From an angel-like creature that brings life, love and beauty into the life of a man, a woman turns into a demon that brings death. In the first novel, the leading female archetype is based on Bazhov’s Mistress of the Copper Mountain, and in the novel “The Surgeon”, based on the myth of Pygmalion, the leading archetype is a female angel, a goddess.

   The paper studies the specificity of imagological representation in the novel Russka by E. Rutherfurd, a contemporary British writer. In this large-scale narration about the history of Russia, the authors single out the chapter devoted to the epoch of Peter the Great for a close study. The research shows how E. Rutherfurd reconsiders some stereotypes about Russia (Russian Asianism, barbarism, etc.), representing the country as a borderland where ambivalent civilizational and cultural tendencies and phenomena collide. In the novel, the national image construction is in accord with the views of the Russian philosopher G. D. Gachev who stressed primarily the geographical position of Russia, situated in the gravitational field between the East and the West. He also highlights the natural phenomenon, the wind, which performs a symbolic function in the novel, reflecting permanent interactions of contradictory tendencies in Russian reality. The ambivalence of the Russian chronotope is exposed in the novel through the private and social history collisions caused by the reforms of Peter the Great. The phenomenon of transition, in particular, is exemplified by the fate of Prokopii who experiences a crisis of self-identification as a result of the destruction of the Russian world-outlook sacral base. In the novel, the motif of borderland is rendered through the juxtaposition of topoi, cultural traditions, the images of Moscow and St Petersburg and, finally, through the image of Peter the Great, portrayed in the context of both apologetic and demythologizing traditions.

   The article analyzes folklore and mythological images in J. August’s Arlo Finch trilogy. The author himself refers his trilogy to the fantasy genre. The origins of the genre date back to English children’s literature of the early 19^th century, which preached compassion and humanity. Once, in a small town located in the mountains of Colorado, the protagonist, a twelve-year-old boy, immerses into the folklore pagan element of the ancient spirits of water, air and fire. He encounters inexplicable phenomena: will-o’-the-wisps, jacklopes and a sorceress, turning into a tree. When he gets into the mystical world of the Long Woods, he encounters an impassable border between the possible and the impossible. The book is distinguished by moral and humanistic pathos, since the protagonist is called upon to save the surrounding world from the evil. The article proves that John August in his Arlo Finch trilogy (2018-2020) makes extensive use of literary allusions and reminiscences, materials of medieval legends, images and motifs of mythology. The author refers to the “lower mythology” – people’s ideas of various nature spirits – a forest, a mountain, a river, a sea, of spirits associated with vegetation and agriculture. This “lower mythology”, in V. Tokarev’s terminology, is considered to be more crude and direct, but stable in folklore and beliefs. Written in praise of the scouts, reminding us of fortitude, endurance, perseverance and group solidarity, the trilogy is filled with intense drama, as during a sports game, teenagers fall into the world of the Long Woods, the world of death, understood as a transgressive transition to another world. The magical world serves as a means of testing the protagonist and his initiation. The book is open to the latest spiritual trends. The article proves that the interference of the unknown supernatural forces in the characters’ fates is interpreted as something hidden, not yet known.

   The article discusses the tendency to problematize the place and role of man in great history, which is observed in a number of texts by modern authors. Reflection on the reliability of historical knowledge, which comes into conflict with the authentic perception of the individual, generates specific plots and images. Thus, the main character of V. Sharov’s novel “The Old Girl” “turns around” and begins to “live back” after her husband’s arrest in 1937; D. Bykov offers a number of alternative events in Russian history, which in the context of the artistic integrity of the novel turn out to be either a forgotten truth (“Spelling”; “X”), or one of the characters’ fiction (“Justification”); the protagonist of E. Vodolazkin’s novel “The Aviator” resurrects an early 20th-century Russia and himself in his notes; artistically rethinking the biography of the Christian righteous Oswald Rufeisen, L. Ulitskaya creates the illusion of the documentary in her novel “Daniel Stein, Translator”. These works about the Russian history of the 20^th century possess the features of poetics that are not characteristic of the historical novel genre, in particular they are: 1) the work with historical prototypes and their mythological reception in the public consciousness and literature; 2) the important role of fantastic elements in plot construction; 3) problematization of the boundaries of the fictional and the documentary through the complication of the narrative structure; 4) gravitation towards the metanovel genre (reflection on the creative act). Thus, it can be stated that in modern Russian novelistics, there is a clear tendency to problematize the boundaries of historical discourse and a shift towards mythopoetics.

   The issue of gender identity violation is relevant today, however poorly studied. Lately, an increasing number of authors, including British writers, have begun to address this topic. In “The Wasp Factory” (1984), the Scottish writer I. Banks (1954–2013) shows the fate of Frank Cauldhame, who, due to his own father’s lies and the hormone replacement therapy used in relation to him, lives in nescience of his own gender all his life. It should be noted that transgenderism is one of the ways to go beyond human nature: this is the topic that I. Banks addresses in his novel. The problem of Frank’s gender identity is perceived as a trauma and as a result of a violent distortion of human nature. Besides the monstrous traits of the protagonist, he has another important characteristic: the created monster, Frank, is an object in the narrative. The main conflict of the novel is built between Frank and his father, who is a kind of his “creator”. In “The Wasp Factory”, I. Banks focuses not on the peculiarities of life after the transition, but on the inhumanity of such modifications and the malignancy of the deformation of human nature.

   The problem of the gender representation of the Other is one of the most interesting and, at the same time, little studied in Russian literary criticism. The possibility of forming an exogamous couple for an English character in a literary work indicates both the specifics of the English society attitude towards a particular nation in general, and the specifics of the author’s characterization of his personage. In recent decades, English literature is beginning to consider female representatives of Eastern European countries, which previously entered the political orbit of the USSR and were not perceived in isolation from it, as a partner for such a character. This type of a female character appears in A. Thorpe’s novel “Between Each Breath” (2007) and becomes not only a significant character, but also a kind of test for the main character, a composer, to go beyond his prosperous routine. Thorpe abandons the traditional depiction of the Eastern European Other in English literature and changes the system of evaluation of both this image and the images of English characters; while in the novel, one can observe the very process of transformation of meanings by doubling the plot situations and introducing a number of individual author’s symbols.

   This article is devoted to the history of creation of Naki Isanbet’s play “Gulzhamal” (“Gulzhamal”), which has several editions. The work introduces new sources into circulation: N. Isanbet’s correspondence with S. Gizzatullina-Volzhskaya, the legendary actress of the Tatar theater; the anniversary scientific article “Tatar teatry 25 el echendә” (“Tatar Theater over the Period of 25 Years”), the playwright’s statements addressed to the leadership of the G. Kamal Theatre and TASSR. Based on the analysis of these sources, the article outlines the stages of N. Isanbet’s work on the play and designates the circle of primary sources used by the playwright in his work about the history of the Tatar theater. The article describes creative contacts of the two famous figures of Tatar culture and systematizes the material on the studies of the play and the history of its run on the Tatar stage. We prove that the work was a tribute that N. Isanbet paid to S. Gizzatullina-Volzhskaya.

   The article studies intermediate poetics in small prose of the post-Soviet abroad, embodying artistic consciousness, formed both under the influence of the Russian cultural canon and the foreign cultural environment. Based on the magazine “Daugava”, one of the most authoritative publications of the post-Soviet countries, the article reveals different variants of intermedia synthesis. Our analysis of prose texts determined the forms of interaction between such art forms as literature, fine arts and music. In the post-Soviet abroad small prose, the study identifies a productive tendency, associated with the creation of ekphrastic works, in which ekphrasis becomes the principle of the world sacralization. The magazine contains texts, related to the phenomenon of the artist’s prose, demonstrating the author’s original style of writing, which correlates with his drawing technique. The article considers the possibilities of the intermedial genre of etude in expressing a special artistic consciousness, as well as various forms of visualization and musicalization of the text, determining the specifics of the genre. The study of short prose, published in the Daugava magazine from 1991, confirms the idea that the intermedial code of the post-Soviet abroad literature acts as a sign of cultural memory that revives spiritual and moral values in the era of crisis.

   The article studies the works of modern Russian literature. Mikhail Elizarov’s novel “Earth” develops the theme of thanatological ideas about the world.

   The purpose of the article is to consider border trends at different levels of the work (the level of the plot, the system of characters, the types of characters and the ways of their construction, and ideological and thematic levels).

   The relevance of the study is due to the fact that, so far, the border phenomena have not been studied in the structure of the multi-semantic novel “Earth”.

   For the first time, the article has examined the plot of the novel as the plot of the trials of the protagonist who comes into contact with Thanotos and comprehends the meaning of death. The term “border” is a loan translation from English meaning “a boundary”. As N. T. Rymar notes in “Poetics of the Border in Literature” (2016), “the border may interest us as a difference, as a phenomenon of exclusion or inclusion; as a frame, threshold or transition, as a limitation”; “borders are also thought of as social boundaries, boundaries of cultures, languages; boundaries in the mental domain”. Finally, the concep-
tion of border is used to analyze the phenomena of transgression, “a boundary situation”, “a border experience”. The category of “border” in Elizarov’s novel determines the form of the diegetic narrator and actualizes the “last” questions in the reader’s mind, modifying the work as a philosophical narrative.

   The article is devoted to the preparation of international students for intercultural communication while developing writing skills in the classes of Russian as a foreign language (RFL). We explore the given problem based on the example of Chinese trainees with the First Certification Level of Russian. We believe, the most important task, when forming intercultural competence in international students, is the development of personal qualities necessary for intercultural communication. The complexity of the task is associated with the national and cultural features characteristic of the given students’ background and the need for them to adopt a new scale of values. The solution to this problem is facilitated by the use of the native and target culture information and its assessment from a universal human standpoint. Various types of written work are used in the classroom to reveal the creative potential of students, teaching them the ability to analyze, compare and express their own position. The article describes the use of individual electronic correspondence between the students and their teacher and analyzes the significance of this communication form. The article presents the results of the study, conducted in two groups of trainees with different training programs. We have come to the conclusion that by teaching international students written speech we promote the successful development of intercultural competence.

   This paper presents the results of the study of the social competence content and structure displayed by the participants of the creative collective. These results would be impossible to obtain without relying on theoretical and methodological knowledge, precisely, on the theory of social competence and methodology of scientific research. We conducted a critical analysis of theoretical provisions, contained in numerous Russian and foreign sources, the application of approaches known in methodology, the study and assessment of the current situation in the field of music education and our personal experience of managing creative collectives exemplified by an ensemble of violinists. As a result, we identified blocks in the structure of social competence, which include both general and specific components in their status. In addition, we have developed a model of the social competence of a creative collective member, which can serve as an indicative basis for the development of the social competence in the process of teaching disciplines that are related to collective music-making in music education institutions. The main model blocks of the structure are cognitive, motivational-axiological, communicative and behavioral blocks, as well as a block of professionally important components, each of which includes a range of inherent components. It should be emphasized that this model reflects the philosophy, state policy and specifics of implementing education in the Russian Federation and can be used in the practical activities of the head of the musical creative team, functioning in the system of children’s additional education.

   This article discusses the issues of teaching orthoepy in the lessons of the native (Bashkir) language taking into account its dialect features. We define the concepts of “oral speech” and its properties, “orthoepy” and special requirements for the teacher’s speech: its correctness, precision, clarity, expressiveness and laconicism. We analyze textbooks from the perspective of determining the content of teaching orthoepy considering the features of the local dialect and identify the level of students’ pronunciation culture and speech hearing. The conclusion is made: the textbooks trace the practical orientation of teaching orthoepy, the content of lexical and grammatical material corresponds to the age-range of students, the selection is made based on the frequency of students’ mistakes; however, lexical material is not enough and orthoepic work in the lessons of the Bashkir language needs to be improved; the teacher needs to clearly and systematically conduct orthoepic work in the lessons of the Bashkir language and literature. We recommend teach orthoepy taking into account the features of the local dialect, the level of pronunciation culture and speech hearing of each student and the class as a whole. Based on the results of the experiment, a set of exercises is proposed for the formation of students' orthoepic competence. The results of the study can be used by specialists in the field of teaching native languages.

   Today, Russian universities strive to implement various programs of international academic mobility. International academic mobility programs contribute to the expansion of international relations, intercultural communication, as well as the development of language competence and the improvement of students’ professional prospects. At the same time, the low level of Russian students’ foreign language proficiency is often an obstacle to international academic mobility programs. Students cannot participate in the competitive selection for exchange programs and experience difficulties in studying at a foreign university. Research, devoted to the study of organizing academic mobility in conjunction with foreign language learning, is mainly focused on incoming mobility, with language programs for the adaptation of foreign students. This paper studies the issue of special foreign language training of Russian students for their participation in international academic mobility programs and presents the study results concerning language difficulties experienced by the participants in international academic mobility programs. The paper identifies them as listening сomprehension, task performance, as well as speaking in a foreign language. We used the interview method, conducted in Kazan Federal University, in which 61 students took part. The results of the study can be used in the development of curricula for various academic mobility programs.

   In modern methodology of foreign language education, much attention is paid to the language and communicative competencies as indicators of foreign language proficiency.

   The aim of this study is to analyze the possibilities of the formation and development of the key competencies using such a Web 2.0 tool as the study blog in teaching foreign languages to university students.

   In this regard, the paper reviews the development of students’ key competencies such as linguistic, compensatory, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, sociocultural, social, educational and informative ones to identify digital methods of mastering students’ language and communicative competencies. The article describes the possibilities of using the study blog, which is a convenient tool used to organize students’ learning activities and their independent work both in the traditional and blended learning format. The study blog is one of the effective means for the development of students’ language and communicative competencies in foreign language teaching, improving the students’ acquisition of structural, social, pragmatic and contextual features and norms of a foreign language. This paper concludes that the implementation of the blog-technology in teaching a foreign language presupposes the organization of the educational process, which enables to form all the necessary students’ language competencies required for their future professional activity.

   This article describes the use of speaking club reference models as a method for developing communicative competence in international students, studying Russian as a foreign language. The problem of removing language and psychological barriers, and the absence or the minimum number of authentic communication situations set the task of practical application of communication skills in conversations with native speakers within the framework of a classroom and extracurricular activities. The reference models, which are described in the article, allow the teacher to master the mechanisms of organizing and conducting speaking clubs and the principals of their implementation into the practice of studying Russian as a foreign language by choosing the best option depending on the request of a specific audience. This method helps international students to minimize psychological discomfort in studying Russian, allows them to develop communication skills in conversations with native speakers in situations of authentic communication, as well as to adapt themselves to and socialize in a foreign environment, increases their motivation to learning a foreign language, makes it possible for students to self-reflect, and, as a result, forms the students’ communicative competence within the framework of the communicative approach to learning Russian as a foreign language.

   The article presents the results of our study of certain aspects of working with gifted children, in particular, their preparation for linguistic competitions in Russian as a non-native language, and methods and techniques for doing linguistic competition tasks. By using descriptive, observation, semantic-stylistic, qualification, design and creative methods, the article describes traditional questions and tasks in the Russian language tests providing a number of original tasks and questions, which require linguistic creativity and logical operations, and gives possible answers. It is emphasized that the development of original and universal solutions, involving modern pedagogical technologies, the formation of students’ scientific thinking, their scientific understanding of key theories, types of relationships and their knowledge of scientific terminology, key concepts, and creative tasks and linguistic intuition, contribute to the development of schoolchildren’s linguistic personality and self-actualization, which will have a positive impact on their future professional career thanks to the meta-subject skills. The study is based on the results of our direct practical work in the Yelabuga “University School” with 30 children undergoing special training in the bilingual Republic of Tatarstan. The first stage of the study results was the publication of the educational and methodological manual “Preparing for the Russian Language Competitions” (Yelabuga, 2021), the second - the bachelor final qualifying works on the topic.

   One of the most difficult issues of organizing students’ learning activities in the course of speech skills development is the choice of the optimal type of students’ work for successful foreign language communication. The article analyzes positive and negative aspects of its most common types: pair and group work in a lesson on the formation of speech skills in non-native language environment where students are monolingual. Particular attention is paid to the development of spontaneous, unprepared speech, which is the most expected goal of learning a foreign language for most students. As a result of the analysis, we conclude that it is necessary to prioritize work correctly when choosing the type of educational work: despite the high motivating factor of group project activities (choosing a topical issue for the project, developing team spirit, providing a high degree of independence), this type of educational work fails to create effective conditions for developing target language speech skills. In the educational conditions, where students are monolingual, the communication tool used to solve communicative tasks, as a rule, is the students’ native language. A foreign language is used only to verbalize the final project results, which represent a sample of prepared foreign language speech.

   The article is devoted to the life and scientific and pedagogical activities of Rifat Khasanovich Sverigin, a Tatar literary critic and teacher.

   The article deals with the life and scientific-pedagogical activities of the Kazan historian Mikhail Bushmakin. Based on archival and published sources, it examines the main periods of his biography: his teaching at the Kazan Commercial College, at the Eastern Pedagogical Institute (later – the Kazan Pedagogical Institute), at the “rabfac” and then, at the Department of General History of Kazan University. Special attention is paid to his methodological research connected with the Pedagogical Association at the Imperial Kazan University, and later – with the Pedagogical Association at the Oriental Pedagogical Institute. M. Bushmakin’s methodological publications summarize teaching experience and discuss timely methodological issues. During the formation of the Soviet higher school, he took an active part in the development of new curricula and authored a number of teaching aids. In terms of research, his interests were connected with the history of France in the 17^th–18^th centuries and, above all, with the historiography of the Great French Revolution. However, the heated discussion, caused by the publication of his article in the journal “Annales historiques de la Revolution française”, made M. Bushmakin change the subject of his research. His following works and his Ph.D. thesis “The Foreign Policy of Henry IV”, presented in 1942, were connected with the Middle Ages in the history of France.

   The article analyzes a scientific school in the history of Tatar drama, the school created by A. G. Akhmadullin, a prominent literary and theater critic. The subject of our study is scientific research, conducted by dozens of candidates and doctors of science who are his disciples. The article briefly discusses the main stages of his life path and the scope of the scholar’s multifaceted scientific activity. The analysis of the dissertation research, defended under the supervision of Prof. Azat Akhmadullin, makes it possible to evaluate the contribution of the scholar to the development of the scientific trend in the history of Tatar drama and highlight new facets in the development of modern Tatar literary criticism.

   The article studies the scientific activity of R. Ganieva and her contributions to the development of Tatar and Turkic literary studies: the creation of a new scientific trend and the formation of a scientific school. The research asserts that her scientific activity was conducted in several directions: the study of Tukay’s creative work against the background of Russian and Turkic literature; the return of the literary and artistic heritage of Tatar writers unknown to the modern reader; research on the history of Tatar literature aimed at reconstructing the continuum space that determines the specifics of the artistic consciousness of national culture; the comparative study of the history of formation and the development of Tatar literary thought with oriental and Turkic literatures. Her works study the development patterns of Tatar literature in the context of Muslim philosophy, Renaissance humanism and the civilization of the East. The article proves that R. Ganieva made a huge contribution to the research into the history of Tatar literature, deepening our views on the development of literary thought among Tatars in general. The analysis of R. Ganieva’s scientific heritage and the evaluation of her works in the modern literary paradigm will make it possible to identify new facets not only in her scientific activity, but also in the development of Tatar literary studies of the second half of the 20^th – early 21^st centuries.