The article deals with the issues of ecological aesthetics in the Finnish poetry of the 20th century. It comprises the evolution of the main provisions in the ecologi­cal worldview of the poets of Finland who write in Finnish and Swedish, from the heritage of Eino Leino to our contemporaries. As a result of their search, poets come to the idea of the “returning to the trees”, the idea of complete identity in relation to any phenomena of nature.

The article analyzes the specific features of the interpretation of the military theme in Slavic literature. The works of literature about The Great war created in Sla­vic countries are characterized by typological convergence of motives, pacifist moods, complex contamination of feelings, artistically fixed personal memory of the war.

The present article comprises the influence of the crisis of the “Modern breakthrough” headed by G. Brandes on creative work of the leading participants of the movement (H. Ibsen, A. Strindberg, H. Bang) as well as an emergence of the new tendencies in literature of Scandinavia linked to the new generation of writers entering the world of literature (K. Hamsun, J. Jørgensen, V. von Hejdenstam).

The article discusses the concept of the “axiological method” of Aristotle’s ʻPoeticsʼ and an approach to the tragedy as an object and method of appraisal in the works of Aristophanes (ʻFrogsʼ) and Plutarch (ʻMotaliaʼ and ʻLivesʼ). All the authors are innovators in their approach: ʻFrogsʼ is the first example of literary criticism, determining the value of the tragedy by its educational value; ʻPoeticsʼ is the first example of systematic criticism, with the purpose to identify the signs of καλλίστη τραγῳδία (“the best tragedy”); in Plutarch’ works the “tragic” often implies a negative connotation, but dramatic allusions perform a variety of functions, from decorative quotations to plot-composition dominants. Aristophanes acts as a practitioner and judges contemporary drama; Aristotle acts as a theorist, analyzing already fixed form of the classic drama without focusing on contemporary theater; Plutarch in this material is an eclectic as usual: his attitude is formed by the modern entertainment theater, but he also uses the classic tragedy as a precedent text – hence the ambiguity of interpretation.

The paper deals with the problem of the aesthetic modality of the lyrical creative work and a special case of the literary mode of lyrics. Modern approaches to this problem are analyzed. A possible solution of this problem in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin’s axiological theory of lyrical creative work is suggested and justified. According to this theory, the lyrical is defined as an aesthetic modality of inward formation of the human personality. The specific features of the literary mode are described for lyrics.

The article deals with the tendency that has developed in modern fiction not to depict the immediate future (the future in 10–50 years). The rapid development of technology in modern society has created conditions in which the predicting events of our time made by fiction writers over the past two or three decades has not had a chance to come true. Fiction writers can not manage to predict anything also, and it creates the situation of psychological discomfort, prompting them to look for a way out of this situation. They found two such ways out: first, it is possible to describe worlds that several centuries older then the present , and in these descriptions they can give free rein to fantasy; secondly, it is possible to place the modern world in fantastic circumstances, and then to make things up about the technologies of the future is not necessary at all. As a result of the rapid technological development, modern fiction has been deprived of such an interesting segment as works about the nearest future.

The first part of the study is an essay on the life and priestly ministry of Archpriest Matthew Konstantinovsky, whose role in Nikolai Gogol’s destiny has conflicting assessments.

The statistical information collected by the author in the process of teaching some inter-faculty classes of science fiction and fantasy studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2013–2017 years is summarized and synthesized in the article. Also the survey of questioning results of courses participants on a wide range of themes connected with theirs perception, interpretation and evaluation of domestic and world science fiction and fantasy literature is given. The analysis of provided information allows to formulate a number of conclusions concerning readership expectations and preferences of MSU students in the field of science fiction and fantasy.

For the first time, a fragment of the diary by M.B. Khrapchenko is examined in the context of Iosif Stalin’s politics in the directing of Soviet Art. The facts recorded in it confirm the intention of Stalin “to direct” art. At the same time, the diary reveals the specifics of Stalin’s tastes and features of his management of the artistic sphere. The article also deals with the history of musical theater.

The article discusses the role and place of the theme of word formation in the system of the course of Russian as a Foreign Language, the meaning of the topic, the difficulties of its mastering and some features of the functional-communicative approach to the presentation of the topic to the foreign audience.

The article analyses the influence of Luís de Camões (1524/1525–1580) poe­tic legacy on the poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (1919–2004), one of the most important Portuguese poets of the 20th century. Besides, the article examines how the destiny of Camões is reflected in Sophia’s poems. The article includes the analysis of such poems as “Gruta de Camões” (1947), “Soneto à maneira de Camões” (1950), “Camões e a tença”(1972) and of the book “The Navigations” (“As Navegações”, 1983). The results of the study show that cogitating about the destiny of Camoes, Sofia considers the place of the creative person in the society and in the world. Intertextuality links the poetry of Sophia and the poetic legacy of Camoens, which is especially noticeable in the book “The Navigations” (1983), that enters into a dialogue with the epic poem “The Lusiads”. All this confirms the importance of continuity and innovation in the literary tradition.

The article discusses episodes of xenia in the ‛Iliad’ and ‛Odyssey’, with particular attention to both social and cultural aspects of this consuetude, and its signification for the plot and poetics of Homer’s poems. In this work, xenia is viewed as a special type of regulated and sacralized relationship. Based on the reviewed episodes, the following conclusions were drawn about the nature of the xenia between Homer’s heroes: xenia is hereditary and extends to the whole clan of heroes; xenia is also necessarily confirmed by the gifts exchange; guest-friends should support each other not only during the war but also in peaceful time; xenia is possible not only between the Greeks, but also between other nations. These episodes further confirm that the social institute of proxenia developed from guest-relations between individual members of the aristocracy and also there were close economic and political relations between the Greek world and the states of Asia Minor.

The article comprises to the consideration of lexico-semantic group of words denoting horse coat names in Russian and English. Information on the composition and characteristic features of the above-mentioned groups, as well as on the existence of equivalents and the word-forming potential of horse coat names is given. The main part of the article regards to the usage of horse coat names in works of fiction and the ways of translating them from Russian into English and vice versa. The translation methods such as generalization, concretization and substitution are briefly characterized and illustrated with examples from a work of fiction and their corresponding translation. Several cases in which the used method is difficult to define are included. The article also describes the reasons for the usage of generalization, concretization and substitution in translation of horse coat names in the works of fiction.

Due to a number of problems of forensic linguistics, such as the defining of emotional tone or the identification of the motive of the text, parametric description of a particular lexico-semantic group with the help of pre-selected parameters is of particular importance. The object of this paper are Russian verbs of oral speech, the method of research is based on selection of parameters (parameters can be either connected, or disconnected with each other) and drawing up “facet classification” on various bases for the investigated verbs. Thus, the verbs marked with the above-mentioned parameters will become the core of the system for semi-automatic or automatic text analysis. This paper explores the usage of term ‛parametrirovanie’ oppose to ‛parametrizaciya’ and ‛parametricheskoje opisanie’ and also the analysis of Russian verbs of oral speech marked by ‛emotivity parameter’ is carried out, which allowed us to draw conclusions about the picture of Russian speakers’ world.

The problem of the correlation of anthroponym functions in the language and in the fiction is featured in the article. The purpose of the article is to compare the language norm and the fiction in the area of anthroponym functions. Anthroponyms are a special type of a language sign, different from the common names, so they perform other functions in the language. A large number of texts are involved in the article to describe the functions of anthroponyms, both from classical and postmodern works of various centuries. A number of anthroponym functions common for fiction and language usage and specific functions which characterize only works of art or only a language are distinguished. An attempt is made to find the cause of the different correlation between the functions of anthroponyms in the language and in the fiction. Differences between the functions of anthroponyms in different usages are connected to the fact that norms and rules of the fiction varies from the general language ones.

The article focuses on the teaching methodology of folklore in lectures for foreigners. Particularly, the article is about reception and methods for analyzing the genre of the riddle in Russian as a foreign language in classes. It also studies the functions of the riddle by analyzing principles and types in the lecture to prove the riddle’s potential for foreign Russian students.

In the following article, we propose an analysis of some basic features of the poetics of “Pale Horse” by V. Ropshin, where the very artistic structure of the text is perceived as a direct consequence of the principal philosophical ideas, expressed in the themes of the death and the action. These two themes determine the specific style of the novel, which is being founded on the crossline of expressionism and existentialism and being related indispensably to the death could be attributed as “poetics of presence”, revealed by the discretization of narration (on the level of sentences and the text as a whole) which is achieved by the unusual application of punctuation marks, which becomes in this novel the medium of mortal semantics. Also this type of poetics is expressed with the renouncement of evaluative words, the impersonal way of constructing phrases and etc. As a result of analysis, we propose a hypothesis, claiming that this novel can be referred to a kind of “hybrid art”, which is founded not on the esthetical sense, but paradoxically on the underlined ethical component.

The article deals with a comparative analysis of oineropoetics in abovementioned stories, where the dream is a plot-forming core. Myth elements about the Golden Age, lost by people, are embodied in the analyzed dreams; differences between dreams and outcomes of plots in general are correlated with outlooks of writers.

The article discusses the glosses of the Conversations of St. Joannis Chrysostomi on the Apostolic Epistles, published in the printing house of the Kiev-Pecherskaya Lavra in 1623. All glosses may be divided into three types: grammatical, lexical, lexical and grammatical. The article will discuss lexical glosses, that, depending on their origin, are divided into several groups: glossy-Latin, glossy-Greek, glossy-arbitrary (Slavic synonyms). All material is described from the point of view of a connection with Greek equivalents; an attempt is made to trace the peculiarities of the scribes’ translation techniques.