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In the mid 1920s, Virginia Woolf was engaged in a dispute with the American critic Logan Pearsall Smith on “the ethics of writing articles at high rates for fashion papers”. Harper’s Bazaar, a commercial magazine to which Woolf contributed four short stories between 1930 and 1939, was a feminine periodical that exploited modernism’s distinction and high cultural capital to captivate a sophisticated, but essentially middle-class, readership by selling the illusion of upward cultural mobility. Although Woolf referred to her high-quality contributions to Harper’s Bazaar as “pot boiling stories for America” written “to make money”, it seems clear that her own engagement with a middlebrow publishing venue did not in the least affect her reputation as a highbrow intellectual and was indeed typical of the multifaceted, reciprocal relationship between the magazine and high modernism in a context in which mobility also meant redrawing the boundaries between intellectual and popular culture. The publication of modernist content within the glossy pages of Harper’s Bazaar was advantageous to both modernists seeking to maintain their celebrity status and the periodical itself, which attempted to cultivate and sustain a refined audience. Much in line with her work of the 1930s, Woolf’s short stories engaged with social and ethical issues such as the righteousness of penetrating other people’s lives and innermost truths (“In the Looking Glass”), violence and decay (“The Shooting Party”), capitalism and antisemitism (“The Duchess and the Jeweler”), human and non-human worlds (“Lappin and Lapinova”). Though often considered as non-canonical in terms of both their rather prosaic plot as well as characterisation, and the commercial venue in which they appeared, the stories Woolf wrote for Harper’s Bazaar reflect the preoccupations of the last decade of her career and are indicative of the tensions between high and low in modernist culture.

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The article traces the changes in the aesthetic conventions of Modern art in accordance with the dynamics of literary development in Great Britain. The study focuses on three key areas: the impact of “the ancients and moderns” quarrel on European philosophical and literary thought; the nuances of critical and literary discourse in Enlightenment-era Great Britain; and the reception of the Enlightenment aesthetic values and novelties in Victorian criticism, linking them to the emergence of twentieth-century modernism. The subject involves the evolution of Enlightenment aesthetics and poetics in Great Britain, particularly the departure from classical art and literature models, and the emergence of concepts like imagination, novelty, and the reader’s subjective experience of art. Seminal literary-critical essays of the eighteenth century, including works by Joseph Addison, Henry Home, Richard Hurd, and Leslie Stephen’s monograph ‘History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century”, are analyzed. The paper also examines philosophical texts by Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Marquis de Condorcet to understand the oscillatory nature of philosophical thought before and during the Age of Enlightenment. The study contextualizes “the ancients and moderns” debate on models for literary excellence and accentuates its role in shaping the discourse of aesthetics and artistic creativity. Contributions by Enlightenment figures such as Addison, Home, and Hurd are explored, emphasizing how they reshaped the discourse of aesthetics by redefining the nature of beauty, the sublime, and the principles of artistic criticism, thereby influencing the literary and artistic productions of their time and beyond. Particular attention is paid to the critical views of Stephen who wrote about the “fluctuating mode” of the literature of the second half of the eighteenth century, illustrating his peculiar subjectivism as an exponent of the Victorian worldview (Stephen saw Sterne’s novels as a serious moral threat), and simultaneously reflecting the normative aesthetic views of the second half of the nineteenth century. The paper also demonstrates how the antinomianism in aesthetic thinking, which challenged traditional norms and values as seen in “the ancients and moderns” quarrel, was further evolved in the works of Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel, the latter articulating the antinomy of “classic versus romantic”. This tradition of antinomian thinking, coupled with the rejection of the idea of linear progression in cultural evolution, a call for a reassessment of values amidst a paradigm shift in culture and the breakdown of traditional ethic and aesthetic systems, finds a notable and unique expression in Friedrich Nietzsche’s works, that significantly influenced the transition from Modernity to Postmodernity. In summary, it is argued that the Modern Age was the time of the emergence of a new aesthetic sensibility, and its aesthetic pluralism and anti-classical literary ideas were pivotal in redefining concepts of progress, novelty, and human consciousness in art and literature. This laid the groundwork for modernist art and literature, characterized by a departure from tradition and a quest for new artistic expressions of human experience.

The paper aims to clarify the biblical image-symbols in Frank Peretti’s mystical thrillers. The problem of the detailed analysis of the lingual representation of the biblical image-symbols and their pragmatic value is solved in the article by applying a complex of methods of linguistic poetics, cognitive linguistics, stylistics and methodological tools of discourse analysis. The paper considers the biblical images-symbols, used in American mystical thrillers written by the protestant author Frank Peretti, as biblical intertexts depicting not only biblical knowledge but also author’s intentions and beliefs in conveying the most profound ideas and principles of the literary texts. Executed in the written works by lexical means, biblical image-symbols become the heart of biblically-marked contexts, which are differentiated according to their addressee orientation into author`s and character`s biblically-marked contexts and their scope – into propositional, composite, and complex biblically-marked contexts. The lingual representation of the biblical image-symbols is differentiated according to their structure into one-component (anthroponyms, toponyms, artifact, animalistic, anthropomorphic) and multicomponent, (two-component, three-component and four-component). The type of semantic transposition in the meaning of the lingual representation and pragmatic value of the biblical image-symbols determined the distinguishing of metaphoric and metonymic linguistic classification of the biblical image-symbols. Metaphoric are classified according to their structure (onecomponent and multi-component), their stylistic characteristics (language and speech metaphoric linguistic representants of the biblical image-symbols), and their denotative meaning (anthropomorphic, naturalmorphic, zoomorphic, and phytomorphic). Metonymic are differentiated according to the kinds of the metonymic transference of meaning into four groups: metonymy of belonging, metonymy of place, metonymy of signs, and metonymy of phenomenon.

In the paper, on the basis of a multimodal critical discourse analysis of political posters and social media posts, the authors outline the complex interplay of multimodal means serving to convey a political leader’s charisma. The paper aims to advance a set of historically conventionalized features typical of the charismatic personality (such as intelligence, self-confidence, persistence, ability to inspire, sociability, dominance, narcissism, and vision), present the updated definition of this notion, and substantiate theoretical and methodological grounds for the study of the interplay of multimodal means portraying a charismatic political leader that assist in conveying a political speaker’s charisma creation through its graphical image, namely political posters and social media posts. The results of the study reveal that charisma is a complex communicative and cognitive phenomenon reflecting person’s beliefs about certain innate, obtained or promoted by media, internal or external subliminal traits of a leader. These beliefs are shaped in the recipients’ consciousness during interactive communication on the basis of the leader’s strategy, techniques, and methods used in oral or written communication, as well as a set of linguistic and extralinguistic means associated with the speaker’s ability to satisfy certain needs of the community. As a study material the authors opted for the images of Boris Johnson, a politician already acknowledged as a charismatic one by international audiences, who has been a prominent political figure for almost a decade and has recently come to the forefront of political and diplomatic support of Ukraine in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. The carried out analysis proves the highly informative as well as subliminal potential of multimodal visual pictographic means aimed at creating a charismatic image of a public person. The authors outline a set of verbal (elliptical sentences, catchy slogans in imperative mood, assonance, alliteration, the use of first person plural pronoun “We”, the lexical unit together, etc.) and visual-graphical means (font of the message, symbolic colour scheme, clothes style, body posture, gestures, oculesic features, etc.), whose interaction is aimed at triggering cognitive processes in the recipient’s mind in perceiving a charismatic image of the politician. Boris Johnson’s charisma is confirmed by the survey conducted among British and Ukrainian respondents as well as by his subscribers’ reactions, comments and likes following his posts on social media. The carried out analysis allows summarising the markers of a politician’s charisma portrayed on social media as follows: the number of comments and likes for their posts; informality while addressing the Prime Minister by his first name “Boris” and presence of a “popular name” “BoJo”; high degree of the followers’ messages expressiveness actualised through verbal means (significant amount of exclamatory sentences, interjections, evaluative epithets and idiomatic expressions), as well as graphical-visual means, in particular through the usage of graphic emoticons (emojis), serving to intensify the overall expressiveness of a message. The conclusion is that social media graphical images are aimed at conveying charismatic political leaders’ vision, offering their followers support and promise of a better future, portraying them as approachable, down-to-earth, considerate but at the same time serious leaders, ready to work to endure a better future. The results of the performed study can provide grounds for interdisciplinary research of both oral and written charismatic communication within the cognitive approach framework considering verbal, nonverbal and paralingual means’ (physiological, psychological, social, etc.) interplay that allows the audience to perceive a speaker as a charismatic one.

The article represents an attempt to build and apply a linguosemiotic model of existential conflict research in modern English fictional discourse. The modern tendency of philological and socio-humanistic studies to involve the tools of semiotics, discourse theory, and multimodality in the process of complex analysis of a literary work as an artistic model of reality is highlighted. The research is based on practical blocks of illustrative material, selected discursive fragments from a literary work, which contain an existential conflict. Basically, the key point here is the analysis of intra- and interpersonal conflict based on the theoretical achievements of semiotics and linguosemiotics (Ch. Pierce, Yu. Lotman, U. Eco, G. Pocheptsov) and the theory of discourse and multimodality (G. Kress, K. O’Halloran, C . Forceville, M. Halliday). It makes it possible to provide a detailed research of existential conflict in fictional discourse with the identification of latent, ambivalent meanings and the relevant reconstruction and interpretation of the conflict by the reader. The paper aims at projecting the modern tendency towards the synergy of various aspects of conflict studies across the humanities. Therefore, the goal of the paper is to outline the advantages of an integral approach to the study of conflict in modern linguistic conflictology and to build a linguosemiotic model for the analysis and interpretation of existential conflict in fictional discourse. Thus, the paper`s core objectives involve: 1) to study the achievements of the semiotic and multimodal approach in its application to synthetic level communicative systems containing conflict; 2) to reveal the place, role and potential of the existential conflict in fictional discourse using the above-mentioned methods; 3) to present a linguosemiotic model for the study of existential conflict in modern English fictional discourse. The theoretical and methodological base of the research involves general-scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction as well as the method of linguosemiotic and multimodal analysis to determine the components of semiosis of existential intrapersonal conflict in fictional discourse. The results of the research consist in the creation of an integral semiotic model of the analysis of existential conflict in modern English-language fictional discourse, which assumes the presence of a static and dynamic component in its structure, revealed, in particular, in the process of semiotic reading of the work in three successive stages of mimesis, semiosis, and synthesis. The process of conflict interpretation presupposes a comprehensive approach to semiotic reading activity developed in consecutive steps. The linguosemiotic means of representing the existential conflict at different levels of the literary work, which have a multimodal nature, have been revealed. The temporal, psychological, and sign-symbolic characteristics of the existential conflict, which make up the semiotic space or semiosphere of the literary work, are analyzed and classified. As a result of the identification and unification of the factors that determine the way of development of existential conflict in fictional discourse, the linguosemiotic model of the analysis of this type of intrapersonal conflict was reconstructed. The model covers the study of the semiotic components of the sign-symbolic, psychological and temporal space and the surface and deep levels of the semiotic reading of the literary work, at which the cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects of the conflict are decoded and reconstructed.

The present paper functions as an introduction to this special issue of mediAzioni, which brings together selected papers presented at the Translating Europe Workshop entitled "L'intelligenza artificiale per la traduzione verso una nuova progettazione didattica?" (3 December 2021), focusing on the pedagogical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a particular emphasis on Neural Machine Translation (NMT). The article revolves around three main themes. First, it considers the impact of emerging neural technologies on language services, redefining the traditional role of the translator and creating new responsibilities and tasks. Despite the considerable progress that NMT has made compared to previous models, it still has shortcomings that are almost "invisible" because they often lack clear grammatical or morphosyntactic marking. Such errors require a certain cognitive effort to identify, since they involve problems that are less obvious to the untrained eye, such as textuality or inadequacies at the level of discourse. Secondly, the article looks more closely at professional practices, especially those related to pre-editing, post-editing and proofreading. Particular emphasis is placed on the indispensable role of the human in translation workflows that integrate NMT not only at the level of post-editing and text revision, but also at the level of translation project management. Finally, the paper moves on to the implications of NMT for the training of translators and beyond, discussing key insights from the workshop participants regarding future teaching practices at university level. The article concludes by outlining the structure of this special issue and providing a brief synopsis of the collected papers.

Ad hoc corpora are considered effective to deliver native-like technical (and legal) translation. This paper explores how the translation of a system-specific document such as an Italian procura alle liti (power of attorney to appear in court) can be addressed. Translating this legal document may be problematic due to the fact that it is not recurrent in the common law system, which contemplates other types of special powers of attorney (PoAs). This paper explores whether and to what extent a corpus-based translation is possible when L2 parallel texts are difficult to find in native contexts. To this aim, a translation project with technical translators and lawyers is carried out. The participants compose an ad hoc corpus which they consult as a language reference tool. The paper findings report that the translators' corpus-based translation is mostly a word-by-word rendering of the source text, which may sound unnatural to an expert of the field. The lawyers' translation partly deviates from source words, but addresses the communicative function of the source text. The paper highlights the need for a balance between the two strategies, for example by focusing on textual functionality and/or paraphrasing, although at the cost of a reduced formulaicity.

Forensic Linguistics as a discipline has gone through more than 30 years of development in China, which can be divided into the brewing period, the establishment and development period, and the comprehensive improvement period. Scholars have presented the origin and development of forensic linguistics in the form of papers, monographs, translations, textbooks, seminars, conferences and other forms, which promotes the future development of forensic linguistics. In the past decade, the study of forensic linguistics has mainly focused on the theoretical research of forensic linguistics, the application of legislative and judicial language, the translation and teaching of legal language. This paper will adopt the method of literature research to summarize the origin and development of Chinese forensic linguistics in the past 30 years, and to anticipate the future development direction of forensic linguistics in the light of the current research characteristics and the hotspot of the times, so as to provide references for the theoretical development and application practice of current forensic linguistics, and to better guide future discipline development in China.

Two texts by A. Rimbaud, published in 1886, but written earlier, and not poems by G. Kahn, J. Laforgue or J. Moréas, are considered the first vers libre in French. The paper shows two approaches to the analysis of free verse rhythm: the rules for reading and counting silent [Ə]; free verse is considered as a derivative of verse or prose, respectively (K. Scott and M. Murat), which proves the fundamental ambiguity of this poetic form and the importance of the reader’s perception in the process of reading as co-creation. The arguments of opponents and supporters of free verse, the so-called “free verse controversy” (“querelle du vers libre”) prove that in the imagination of writers there exists the connection between the poetic system and the social order. The paper considers the opposition proposed by the French researcher M. Murat — that of the national French vers libre and the international free verse that goes back to the American, that is to say Whitman’s model of Whitman through Valerie Larbeau’s poetry. The creative act of Larbeau, who created a heteronym — the English-language poet Barnabooth, raises the question of erasing national prosody and switching the linguistic code.

“A Tree of Night” is probably Truman Capote’s most terrifying piece, which, along with “Miriam”, has become his signature story. Created in 1943 and published two years later in Harper's Bazaar, this story was called a “pure distillate of terror” by reviewers. Despite the absence of the manuscript in Capote’s archive and his silence about how and when this story was written, the paper pieces together the writer’s personal circumstances during that period. Based on these data the paper makes a suggestion on when the story might have been created and identifies the archetype of the mysterious character named the Great Pasha. This information corrects a number of inaccuracies contained in Capote’s biography published by Gerald Clarke in 1988. The paper explores in detail the history of the Great Pasha — “a fakir from Egypt”, who toured American South with a bold performance “Buried Alive”. According to the hypothesis made in the article, it was the Great Pasha who met six year old Truman at his aunts’ house in Monroeville in May 1931. Twelve years later Capote drew on his memories of the Great Pasha and his assistant Madame Flozelle to create sinister characters of his Gothic story “A Tree of Night”. Thanks to the archival materials the paper managed to bring out the traits that Capote’s characters owe to their archetypes, and to reconstruct the facts of the fakir’s life. For the first time in Russia the article reproduces a unique picture featuring the Great Pasha, his assistant, and the writer’s mother Lillie Mae Faulk.

In 1949 Maria and David Burliuk made a trip to France “following Van Gogh” in order to restore the memory of the French painter's stay in Arles. This trip was embodied in a series of Burliuk’s paintings and in the text Journeys available in Russian (handwritten manuscript) and in English (magazine publication). The paper considers author’s narrative strategies in both versions of the travel journal; special attention is paid to the subjective organization of the text. One can hear the voices of Marusya Burliuk as well as her husband’s although she employs the author’s we. Complex narrative structure of the text is construed with a number of techniques, the most important one being switching of point of view. The paper focuses on the goals of the journey that were set by the travelers and on the ways they were reflected in the text. It is shown that the trip to France, first of all, was aimed at strengthening Burliuk's reputation as an “American Van Gogh”, and, next, at commemorating the French painter and preserving his heritage. The publication in the magazine Color and Rhyme is a unique complex work based on the interaction of both visual and textual material, it includes ekphrases, literary allusions, an epistolary, reprints of materials from the press, American reviews of the Burliuk’s works, etc. There are lots of descriptions, genre scenes, literary portraits, masterfully created by Marusya Burliuk in the published version of the journey, while on the handwritten version reflects private, intimate aspects of the journey (letters to the family).

The article focuses on the two great figures of the XX century, Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. Their occupations belonged to quite distant realms of science and fiction, and the only event that united the two in public consciousness was Shaw’s speech in honor of Einstein at the OTR fundraising dinner at the Savoy Hotel on 28th October 1930 where he bestowed the honorary title of “Maker of the Universe” upon the scientist. However, these two great men had much more in common than it is generally accepted. The paper presents some little-known details of Shaw — Einstein relationship, establishes a correlation between their views on a number of socio-political, scientific, philosophic, ethical and aesthetical issues including common grounds and principal differences in their attitude towards the USA and the American social structure. Apart from the few existing articles in the foreign academic journals, this research relies on the official European and American press records of Shaw’s and Einstein’s speeches, their private correspondence, diary entries, memoirs and (auto)biographies created by their close friends, colleagues and contemporaries (such as Beatrice Webb, Leopold Infeld, Ronald Clark), as well as Einstein’s essays and Shaw’s dramas. Another significant figure in the paper is the American writer and scientist Archibald Henderson who, according to professor W.L. Phelps, was “perhaps the only living man who can talk on their own level with the two greatest intellects of today, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein.” The vast majority of documents, radio and video addresses cited in this article have not been translated into Russian; the paper is a pioneering study in Russia, where this topic remains unknown and haven’t so far attracted attention of the Russian academia.

In this paper we have analysed a graphic novel “Maus. A survivor tale” by Art Spiegelman as well as some variants of its translations in the framework of theory of multimodal discourse analysis (ADM) (O`Halloran). The article focuses on analysing the corpus of investigation on its language and nonlanguage level. The aim of the research is to explain in terms of the multimodal discourse analysis theory of main principles of graphic novel translation while observing the way of source language graphic novel transmutation and reconstructing its architecture in the target novel. The methods having been applied in the present paper are those of linguistic observation and description, empiric comparison of translation variants and translation results analysis using ADM tools. Applying methods of ADM in the process of analysing graphic novel results from the necessity to respond to the main challenges of ADM theory for the studies in theory and practice of translation, as well as semiotics and general linguistics. The objectives of the article are to outline the iconic-textual structure of the graphic novel under the analysis, to characterise the visual level of the investigated graphic novel, to generalise arising problems to the translator. The concept of multimodality derived from semiotics is being studied in the article explaining the reason for applying the multimodal approach in the study of the graphic novel. Modalities represented in the graphic novel on non-language level are systematised through different types of multimodal phenomena and their relevance for target text meanings transcreation is described. Both visual and language modalities, which are important for the construction of the meaning, are focused attention to and the multimodal phenomena are piled and systematised in the article. The relationship between the visual and written modalities are discussed and the role and importance for the translation process are explained. Until now there are different investigations of the Maus, but there is no investigation from the multimodal perspective. The investigators focuse on the discursive and pragmatic part, as well as on the expressive value of the work, compare the characteristics of the translation; draw attention to the problems of the literary style of the work Maus; study the role of images in the creation of the work. However, there is still no study of graphic novels from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis. By means of a series of operations of translation techniques the original text is reconstructed in the translation variant. It involves compressing or widening of the original text, removing inconsistencies between different modalities, reinterpreting “language shell” so that a semiotic content could be preserved and the author’s message transmitted without corruption, for that redrawing some characters or chapters, removing, or replacing some visual symbols with different ones. Illustrative material shows a certain logic scheme to follow the process of translation taking into consideration different multimodal phenomena, as well as the absence of some of its constituents. On the one hand, extralinguistic objects engraved in pictures of the graphic novel may present the reason for the translation technique of addition, and on the other hand the absence of some details in the pictures may justify the translation technique of omission. Evaluating functional types of multimodal phenomena also may lead one to adequate selection of synonyms or a phrase to choose in a process of translation having as a “guide” visual image supporting language level of a graphic novel. The term “graphic novel” is specified as well as the difference between terms “comic” and “graphic novel” is outlined. Graphic novel format is proved to assimilate to the literary novel with the content of memoirs, autobiography, history, documentary reports etc. Maus is the first graphic novel dealing with Holocaust theme aimed at the adult audience. According to the definition of the graphic novel, Maus is seen to share discursive mechanisms with visual narrative instruments, embedded in multimodal phenomena. The types of multimodal phenomena are selected in the present investigation and grouped with illustrative examples taken from the corpus. In the framework of ADM theory, the selection of translation techniques and operations are justified, and the reasons for certain translation variants are explained. As it is shown in the paper, graphic novel translation differs from literal one. The most important characteristics of graphic novel translation distinguishing this genre of literature have been outlined: 1) the graphic novel translation unit obligatory consists of both verbal and visual parts; 2) the intonation of the characters of the graphic novel is a part of a style and is taken into consideration in the course of translation; 3) visual part of the graphic novel is presented by multimodal phenomena that influence the strategies of translation. General recommendations for the translation of the historic graphic novel have been given, mainly: 1) for the purpose of collecting information from the visual part. It is recommended to read and discover the entire content of the novel before starting the translation, paying attention to the multimodal phenomena and their types mentioned in this article. Attention is paid to past events, other extralinguistic meaningful objects. An individual language style is translated with the same style and is maintained throughout the text; 2) on the language level, it is recommended to choose at least the sentence as the minimum translation unit of the graphic novel using substitution techniques within the unit as long as the final sentence reflects the same message. However, the largest translation unit can be chosen. Appropriate options are a speech bubble (speech bubbles) or the entire page. Bubbles (speech balloons) often contain colloquial speech, which differs much more between languages than literal text of a book. The ease of colloquial speech is nearly impossible to achieve without the freedom to change the order, composition, and number of sentences. Often, it is not the character-specific phrases that need to be translated, but rather the emotion of outrage or joy, recreating it using the character’s language (such as the speech of the immigrant, the main character, Vladek, or his wife); 3) the use of bold. It is understood that it is not necessary to use bold type in the same units that appear in the original. The most important thing is to convey the same meaning and intonation in the translation avoiding the “word for word” translation; 4) the language style of the author and the characters. The author and the characters of the graphic novel have their own language style, which is part of the meaning. Characters may have their own characteristic expressions and circumstances that explain the choice of phrase translations. After reading the text and visualising the novel, it becomes clearer what type of the target text of the protagonist should be created to remain truthful and sound natural; 5) “Litmus paper”. It is recommended to read the translation after a couple of days without looking at the original text thinking about whether or not the author would choose the same words, style, intonation; 6) Culture references create a certain atmosphere and are translated (6.1) literally as in the example of gefiltefish translation or (6.2) simplification is used the culture in case of translation of the same unit into Russian рыбафиш; 7) translation of anthroponyms and proper names. It is not recommended to translate the proper names of the historical graphic novel taking into account the documentary part of the novel. The same variants of anthroponyms are maintained throughout the text; 8) accuracy is the second priority after avoiding meaning corruption. One should try to preserve accuracy if it is possible, respecting the condition of preserving the meaning without corrupting it. To achieve the effect of equal perception of the novel by the reader both in the original language and in the translation language, two things are needed: understanding what is said in the original text and reconstructing it in the target text. The ADM theory, in this respect, is the tool to achieve the most adequacy and the most accuracy at the same time.

The paper is aimed at filling the gap in learning the formative image peculiarities of the English and American Imagistic poetry by analyzing the correspondence of the internal and the external and their correlation. This is where the answer lies, why T.S. Eliot called Imagism “an opening salvo” of English/ American Modernist poetry. It also explains the reason for a long-term effect of this short-term “school” in the English poetry of the twentieth century. Imagism hasn’t left any extended or profound theory as far as the criteria for producing “hard, dry images” (T.E.Hulme) are concerned. Since then the problem has been under-studied and calls for more in-depth analysis. The modern theoretical background of the paper includes the ideas of S. Averintsev and M. Gasparov, Paul Ricoeur and Gaston Bachelard; the criticism of the Imagism founders (T.E. Hulme and E. Pound) as well as its present-day English and American researchers. The major theoretical points highlight the important features of image transformation in Imagism: the dual (semantic and psychological) nature of an image (P. Ricoeur); loss of its axiological constituent thus forfeiting its wholeness (M. Girshman); its non-permanent essence (G. Bachelard). All these “new” sides underlie too general and vague definition of an image as “an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” given by Ezra Pound, his definitive denial of using images as “ornaments” and the emphasis on the image affiliation with speech, not language. The fight doesn’t have to be limited only to opposing Romanticism (as in Hulme’s “Romanticism and Classicism”). Equally significant and far more sophisticated is the distinction between Symbolic and Imagistic essence of an image (Pound’s “Retrospect” and “Gaudier Brzeska”). For Pound, the main criterion is the receptive potential of an image, its semantic openness which offsets its meaning as finally fixed in some symbol. The paper examines the possibility to apply Roland Barthes’s idea (“L`imagination du signe”, 1962) of the crucial influence of the interior (symbolic) relationship and two exterior (paradigmatic and syntagmatic) relationships on the formation of both single image and the total imagery of a certain type of art conscience – consequently, of Symbolism, Romanticism and Imagism. In the early period of Imagism development (the poetry of F. Flint, E. Storer, to a lesser extent, of T.E. Hulme) the images still preserve the inner affinity with the signified objects (concepts) as seen in Romantic and Symbolic image “patterns”. And throughout Imagism development, this inner affinity is being weakened until a distant outer resemblance is left. It is clearly seen in Hulme’s “Autumn”, Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”, H.D.’s “Oread”, “Hermes of the Ways” et al. The close reading of the W.C. Williams’s poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” is carried out in front of the “Tall Nettles” by Edward Thomas (1878–1917), his contemporary, who is now considered to be one of the “non-Modernist modern” poets. It is stated that the central image of the red wheelbarrow in its every detail constitutes a modern pastoral while Thomas’s nettles stand for psychological matrix of personal melancholy and despair. Syntagmatic relations also involve the further interaction of signs in the form of “superposition”, forming montage as one of the important Мodernist techniques not only in poetry, but also in Мodernist prose. And it becomes evident that it is not a mechanically borrowed cinema technique, as it is commonly viewed, but a deeper, “syntagmatic” similarity. The result of the research, based on the analysis undertaken, seems to prove its initial point: the poems of T.E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, W. Carlos Williams, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) taken as models, manifest that the image in Imagism is every time constructed as a new actual syntagma of the common imagination of a poet and a reader to become the unique image for every single poem without its further “universal” use in any virtual paradigm.

The ‘migration’ of concepts from one language to another, which takes place in cultural exchange, frequently gives rise to changes in the target language, primarily involving the lexical field. The reception of the Romanist legal tradition in China has led to the formation of a specialized lexicon which, along with the translation and production of Roman law-related works, has been subject to constant growth. This kind of terminological transposition has often resulted in the emergence in Chinese of more than one translatant for the same Latin word. As a concrete example of this phenomenon, this paper aims at providing a synoptical overview of the rendering in Chinese of the concepts of dolus and culpa, two legal institutions also largely connected to the field of commercial law. The sources analyzed from a diachronic and contrastive perspective range from the earliest manuals of Roman law published in China at the beginning of the twentieth century to recent documents, translated or directly composed in Chinese. More specifically, this paper will try to answer the following questions: what is the historical evolution of the main terms used in Chinese to express the concepts of dolus and culpa? What are the criteria adopted by Chinese translators/authors in choosing these terms? What are the main features and issues related to the linguistic rendering of the two legal institutions? As for the results of this study, attention will be paid to one of the peculiarities of the linguistic rendering of the concept of culpa, that is the use of two different translatants: guoshi 过失 and guocuo 过错. At the same time, another aspect on which this paper will shed light is the existence of a plethora of translatants related to the concept of dolus (qizha 欺诈, guyi 故意, zhaqi 诈欺, etc.). In this sense, on the one hand, it will be shown how the presence of multiple translatants is acceptable and useful when they are used to express the different shades of meaning conveyed by dolus and culpa that cannot be rendered by means of one single translatant for each of these two notions; on the other hand, this paper will highlight the necessity of a higher homogeneity and standardization of the Chinese Romanist lexicon.

The paper deals with a comparative and contrastive analysis of the experience Azerbaijani and Turkish languages have gained in the transition to the Latin script. The methods of rendering personal names from European languages which, similarly to Azerbaijani and Turkish, use the Latin alphabet into the specified Turkic languages and vice versa are considered. The author presumes that the way a problem of rendering personal names as a special category of proper names is solved provides the grounds for giving an opinion on how successful the integration of a language that has switched to a Latin-based alphabet into a family of languages and cultures sharing the similar Latin alphabets has been or is going to be. In this respect, the study is topical since it enables one, by considering similar experiences of the languages involved, to forecast the trajectory the Kazakh language, intending to switch to the Latin-based alphabet in the near future, is going to follow. The novelty of the study consists in the linguistic forecasting method applied, which implies solely the study of the real experience of the languages subject to study and therefore provides the forecast with one hundred percent verifiability to be achieved once Kazakhstan has entirely transitioned to the Latin script. The theoretical value of the research consists in a contribution it makes to the methodological basis of the comparative and contrastive studies of related languages, including the creation of alphabets for them, as well as in a possibility of making use of the results achieved herein in further studies aimed at theoretical comprehending the peculiarities of a language functioning in the translation aspect after its transition to a new alphabet. The study has made it possible to identify the methods of rendering personal names from/to European languages, used nowadays in Turkish (absolute and relatively complete transfer) and Azerbaijani (transcription and transliteration) languages. Through the prism of practical experience of these languages, an objective forecast is made with respect to the Kazakh language in case of its complete transition to the Latin-based alphabet. The paper concludes that the Kazakh language has reasons to follow either the way of Turkish, as the language of the state, which to a certain extent has managed to successfully integrate into Europe in cultural, economic and political terms, and what Kazakhstan certainly strives for, or the way of Azerbaijani, to which the Kazakh language is connected with ties of a shared cultural and historical past.

The paper is concerned with some aspects of politeness in the request act by the pragmatic connotations of syntactic structures in Hindi and Persian. Considering the role of politeness as an explanation for the deviation from the Grice’s cooperative principle, the main question of the paper is whether Leech’s maxims of politeness operate on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations and whether there is any hierarchy in their manner of application. To answer the abovementioned question the main hypothesis of the research posits that Leech’s maxims of politeness have a structure of hierarchy in both Persian and Hindi. Considering the Pandharipandes' (1979) hierarchy of the degree of politeness proposed for Hindi, this paper aims to develop a similar hierarchy of the degree of politeness for Persian and to analyze the Leech’s maxims operating in the respective hierarchies of politeness. The general theoretical framework adopted for the present study is based on Lakoff (1972), and Leech (1980). Whereas the findings of this research indicate a hierarchy in Hindi and Persian at the syntagmatic planewith regard to their respective Leech’s maxims,no such hierarchyis detectable for paradigmatic relationwhichholds good for all types of social situations.

This academic article offers a model of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO (hereinafter referred to as the EUS) as a supplement to the Ukrainian National Corpus (hereinafter referred to as the UNC), where texts are presented as a hierarchical structure. In an effort to provide a more comprehensive view of NATO, UN, and WTO official and business documents, a mechanism of use of our model envisages determination of the exact position of a text in all UNC corporas, what essentially simplifies the practical process of search and automated translation of texts and special terminology in particular. In consequence, the author offers to increase the number of unique texts that will ensure the representativeness of the EUS in the Ukrainian National Corpus, and to divide the whole process of the EUS formation into elementary tasks that will increase the UNC efficiency. The practical value of the research lies in a possibility to use the EUS for texts parallel translation and terminological phrases separation on the basis of such texts. The methodological potential of our research is based on the works of well-known Ukrainian and foreign scholars (V. Bohorodytskyi, I. Baudouin de Courtenay, K. Brugman, W. Wundt, B. Delbruck, G. Paul, O. Potebnia, P. Fortunatov, W. Scherer, H. Steinthal, A. Schleicher et al.), who strengthened the scientific interest to the problem of translation and corpus of texts in particular. The object of the research is a model of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO. The purpose of the research is to prove that the model of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of official and business documents texts can become a full-fledged informational foundation for the formation of texts parallel corpus within the Ukrainian National Corpus. The methods of observation and experiment were applied to analyze empirical, review, conceptual analytical tools that specify the meaning of described objects and phenomena given their qualitative affiliation to the UNC. The study focuses on a number of tasks, in particular: - to determine a theoretical and linguistic basis of the concept “English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO”; - to determine the mechanism of updating of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, WTO within the UNC; - to find out the specifics of formation and filling-in of the EUS; - to substantiate the relevant methodology of examination of official and business texts of NATO, UN, and WTO in the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents; - to single out and itemize the advantages of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO within the UNC. Analysis of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO as a construct of the parallel corpus of texts of the UNC was carried out in several stages. The first stage envisaged description and inventory. Theoretical works on the history of the Ukrainian National Corpus were reviewed and generalized, and the concept of “English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO” was determined. It was found out that the UNC is the object of research in such areas of linguistic studies as the applied and corpus linguistics that construe the corpus of texts as a translator’s tool. This encourages us to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the UNC and justify the expediency of our proposal to develop the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO. Definition of the UNC as a national corpus of texts that contains only Ukrainian texts and does not envisage a parallel translation evidenced the need to create a proposal of a parallel corpus of texts with an updated English-language database. The selection of lexical items with the official and business semantics is based on documents of international organizations, such as NATO, UN, and WTO. At the same stage, we determine the purpose of the research, in particular, the formation of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents, which envisages a parallel translation of NATO, UN, WTO texts. This sequence of procedures allowed us to carry out consideration and interpretation of existing theoretical provisions and inventory of factual research materials. Theoretical and corpus analysis methods were used in the research. The second stage envisaged analysis and differentiation. Special aspects of filling-up of the EUS with official and business texts of NATO, UN, and WTO were characterized. Theoretical analysis of the EUS was carried out in order to establish a clear hierarchy of the UNC structure. The main types of participants of the EUS formation (students, teaching staff) were differentiated and the behavioral model of every participant in the process was developed. The specifics of presentation of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents of NATO, UN, and WTO in the UNC was established. This final stage, where methods of observation and experiment were used, evidenced determination of an exact place of a text in the EUS (belonging to a certain category of homogeneous texts) that becomes a crucial factor in choosing a translation option. Numerous terminological phrases and expressions in the analyzed official and business documents of UN, NATO, WTO, which act as identifiers in the EUS, were systematized. An increase in the number of unique texts (official and business texts) was noted, which ensures the representativeness of not only the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of official and business documents texts, but of the UNC in general. The final stage of the research confirmed the expediency of the division of the whole process of sub-corpus formation into elementary tasks. We generalized the statement that the EUS is a dynamic, context-dependent sub-corpus (only official and business texts of international organizations, such as NATO, UN, WTO) and an optimal algorithm designed to be easily downloaded and used. Conclusion. The analysis conducted in the present paper is meant to illustrate a new approach to forming a modern model of the sub-corpus of texts of official and business documents. The model of the English-Ukrainian sub-corpus of official and business documents texts of NATO, UN, and WTO provides for a clear division into categories of homogeneous texts and a quick search for special terminology of international organizations, such as NATO, UN, and WTO, in the EUS. In the context of the texts analyzed in the current paper numerous separated words and expressions-identifiers can help to carry out search and refer to a relevant text in the sub-corpus. Compilation of terminological nominations glossary, their functional and stylistic labeling and assimilation into the commonly used vocabulary of the EUS and later on in the UNC are currently at the stage of formation and approval. To this end, the current research manifests the concept of the EUS as a sub-corpus of the UNC that allows the prompt presentation of relevant texts of the official business style and coverage of the broadest range of interested readers.

The article aims to study the poetics evolution of a great Polish poet and prose writer, Nobel prize winner Czesław Miłosz towards a fundamentally new comprehensive literary form: from “Piesek Przydrożny” (“Roadside Dog” 1997) to “Abecadło” (“Milosz`s ABC`s” 1997) and “Inne Abecadło” (“A Further Alphabet” 1998). The purpose stimulates the usage of the analytical, hermeneutics and receptive methodology, as well as textual analysis. It is stressed that the years of this work publication indicate the writerєі success in his determined search for a form that would be capable, containing immense life material, countless events, lives and artistic-philosophical reflections, to create the picture of the 20th century. The paper highlights why “Piesek Przydrożny” does not meet any requirements for containing the unlimited number of life facts within a text. We’ve noted the organizing function of Piesek in the system of a fictional unity. Moving freely, Piesek made it possible for Miłosz to create a certain series of philosophical pieces (“Ubóstwo wyobraźni”, “Wzniosłość”, “Pieśń dziadowsku”, “Со upadek”, “Powieść”, “Gombrowicz”, “Polski literat”) and several tragic essays – “Ojcowskie kłopoty”, “Zmartwienia historyka” and others. It is proven that while the form of this book contains a variety of material, it still cannot give Miłosz the absolute freedom he was striving for. The writer was determined to find the form which would, according to him, “allow for much freedom”, “not pursue beauty but just register facts”. Considering Е. Brazgovskaya’s findings, the productivity of the alphabet (аbecadło) is proved. The paper expresses the idea that one can treat the alphabet (аbecadło) as a kind of a memoir genre. The innovative structure of “Abecadło”, consisting of essays-novels, is analyzed. The article traces the associative connections which cement 200 essays into a single entity, creating the image of the epoch.

The paper offers the comparative study of two poems: Paris by Hope Mirrlees (1920) and The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (1922). The research aims to consider Paris as one of the key works of modernist poetry and a possible model for The Waste Land. The author of the paper turns to some parallels confirming the similarity of these two poetic texts. Particular attention is paid to the “anthropological” or “ritualistic” mode of both poems. The philosophical concept and poetic structure of these poems were based on the ideas presented in the books and research papers by the representatives of Cambridge anthropological school (J.G. Frazer, J.E. Harrison, J.L. Weston, etc.). Both poems could be considered in the context of modern anthropological and psychoanalytic theories. The ritualistic mode of the texts not only provides scientific grounds for the embodiment of personal and collective experience in poetry but creates a powerful vital impulse inherent in those archaic rituals, the elements of which were reconstructed by the poets. The works of J.G. Frazer, J.E. Harrison, J.L. Weston, and others help the readers to comprehend and expand the content of certain episodes, clarify “dark” places, to see a harmonious poetic structure and sophisticated concept of the world order, civilization and man behind the external arbitrariness and fragmentation. Both Paris and The Waste Land became manifestations and embodiments of the “mythological method” articulated by Eliot in 1923.

The paper examines in detail the history of the creation of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, as well as the methods of its research in Western and Russian literary studies. The author proposes to combine a careful reading of this text with the notion of this poem as a spiritual autobiography of Eliot, which has various dimensions: from personal, proper poetic to esoteric. Based on the analysis of the biography of the young Eliot, the poet's relationship with J. Verdenal, the history of the poem, the drafts, the final text, the title of the poem, the epigraph, the poem's place in the poet's work, Eliot's statements about “Prufrock” the paper identifies the parameters of the symbolism of this work, which, playing on Eliot's complex relationship with the inexpressible (having an ambivalent nature), extends to its composition (the relationship of “I” and “you”; the paradoxical nature of the ending), the system of images and motifs (Prufrock as a theatrical person, the opposition of the male and female world), the special sense of reminiscences from Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, the philosophy of creativity as a mystery (Prufrock as a poet, combination of eroticism and mysticism, the theme of sacred crime) and love (homoerotic theme), genre (elusiveness of genre, Faustian beginning in it), symbolism and esoterics (“Prufrock” as a Masonic text on initiation, on life as theatre). The author gave a special place to the concretization of ekphrases (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Burne-Jones), the content of which confirms the thesis that the poem has a text in the text.

The paper attempts to build an integral system of myth and determine its poetic function in the literature of the first half of the 20th century. There are a huge number of approaches to the study of myth as an unconscious symbol, but a myth becomes a literary phenomenon only when it is purposefully used by the author as part of his creative vision. Remythologization or the conscious return of literature to the original sources and archetypes in the work of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, J. Joyce, and others are part of the poetic innovation of an entire literary era. The article briefly traces the history of remythologization, and the name of T.S. Eliot stands out as the first to state and fix a new attitude to myth (“‛Ulysses’, Order, and Myth”, 1923). Myth, according to Eliot, is not an unconscious “force” of the writer's creative imagination, but is conceived as a poetic category, as a means of recreating the aesthetic orderliness of a work from the chaotic reality. Conscious mythologization is also conditioned by the need to synthesize several heterogeneous creative structures in a single artistic whole. The reader conceives the presence of a myth in a literary work through the association of imagery with extra-textual plots, thereby fulfilling the author's intention. The paper, using the example of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot and “The Wheel” by W.B. Yeats, shows how the suggestive archetypes and the variety of reader associations contribute to the timeless perception of the text (reading does not last in time, it is extremely generalized, cyclical, integral). All poetic means of remythologization are aimed at such a synchronous perception of the artistic time and space of the work, which acquires a mythologically universal character, becomes an artistic model of the world.

The paper is dedicated to the poem by T.S. Eliot Four Quartets (1943), it examines its artistic specificity, its poetic and musical peculiarities with their complex symbolic subtext and a whole layer of meanings. The organizing principle of the Four Quartets is the synthesis of myth and melos. The poem contains features “borrowed” from music so that the “musical energy” (melos) that is not yet a melody finds a specific poetic embodiment. Built on the principles of musical poetics, Eliot's poem contains various artistic images that alternate and combine according to the principle of the development of musical themes (like Wagner's leitmotifs) and their meaning does not remain the same, but is changing. Another similarity between the poem and a musical work is its timeless character: a full perception of the musical integrity of Four Quartets is achieved after repeated reading of the text, simultaneous experience of what has already been read and what has yet to be read — and this is like listening to a symphony, the desire to perceive it in its entirety, beyond time. The myth, in contrast to the quite specific mythologems of The Waste Land, in Four Quartets and its melodiousness, does not have any subject or plot even in its infancy and is rather represented by abstract, general ideas and archetypes. The article analyzes the archetypes and elementary symbols of Four Quartets (circle, square, quaternity, intersecting lines, etc.) and reveals their significance. The paper demonstrates that the imagery of Four Quartets is also based on Eliot's personal impressions, which merge with many “intellectual” associations and, refracting in the mythopoetic structure of the poem, turn into general, universal symbols.

The article investigates works by Octavia E. Butler (1947 –2006), an African-American writer who had a significant impact on the development of science fiction in the USA and the world. The paper provides an overview of Butler’s works and reveals the relationship between the problems and language / style of her prose, the latter being determined by the former. The first part of the paper examines the main topics of Butler’s works and focuses on the problem of survival. Being a disappearing minority, Butler’s heroines are usually isolated from others and, consequently, in order to survive they have to adapt to the circumstances, since resistance is impossible. However, for Butler the survival of an individual is less important than the preservation of the humankind. For Butler’s heroines it is the reproduction of the genetic and/or cultural memory of mankind that make the future possible and guarantee the survival. In the second part of the paper Butler’s works are analyzed in the context of Afrofuturism and it is pointed out that although Butler has much in common with other representatives of this movement, she deals with the projects for building an ideal society in a different way: Butler is skeptical about utopia as a project of a conflict-free society. The final part of the paper examines Butler’s language and style, noting that for her language serves as an impersonal, objective tool of analysis of human behavior. A special attention is paid to Butler’s latest novel Fledgling (2005), in which language serves both as a tool for expression and a topical issue.

The article provides an overview of the 29th international conference “Ezra Pound and Friendship.” The conference was held at Kyoto University from June 24 to June 26, 2022, virtually. The conference was attended by researchers from fifteen countries, including scholars from the USA, Germany, France, Japan, China, Great Britain, Russia (Lomonosov Moscow State University). Two crucial themes of the conference related to (1) Pound's friendships and (2) the Asian, in particular the Japanese dimension in the work of the American poet did not limit its participants in their choice of material. The papers presented at the conference were distinguished by an extraordinary thematic diversity, which made it possible to construct a global context to study Pound. During the conference, a number of papers touched upon Pound's friendship with W.B. Yeats, E. Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, A. Gaudier-Brzeska, B. Banting, Katsuo Kitasono. Several panels were dedicated to Pound's interactions with his younger pen friends. The very concept of friendship in Pound's work, the specificity of its perception by the poet and its closeness to the Neoplatonic, Provencal, Confucian traditions was discussed. A number of speakers turned to the “Cantos” and methods for their study. One of the most important features of the conference was its focus not only on the study of Pound's poetry, but also on the poetry of contemporary authors: according to the established tradition, the closing panel of the conference was dedicated to poetry readings and subsequent discussion.

The present paper is aimed at studying the artistic mind of the modern English writer John Fowles as the creator of the original worldview in its postmodern style. It has been specified that British artistic culture does not demonstrate neither the extremes, peculiar to the art of “transition” or “frontier” nor sharp denial of everything that seemed inviolable. Inclining towards realistic forms of the English classics, a lot of postmodern authors, including Fowles, prefer a synthesis of the old with the new. This applies both to postmodernism and all avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements, aimed at fundamental changing of the general ideas about the beauty and ugliness. “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, written by John Fowles, proposes such a postmodern synthesis in the context of the “playing with the past” thesis. In his novel, the author presents a special type of “new reality”, corresponding to the period of the profound changes inside the movement during the period starting from the end of the 19th century till the end of the 20th century. Instead of the typical for English literature “hero in search”, the novel under consideration demonstrates an existential type of a man. The above-mentioned hero, who is embodied in the images of Charles and Sarah, seeks his individual freedom and “corrects” his own destiny. It should be emphasized that gaining true freedom is possible only through overcoming various life and social obstacles associated with breaking class and social ties, as well as with great internal suffering. Fowles’s peculiar style of narration helps to reveal the main theme of the novel. The author uses postmodern irony, which is meta-irony, and pastiche. The method of “overlapping epochs” forms an original intertext whereby the semantic field of the novel increases. The literary significance of the outlined method is multifaceted: an elitist reader perceives text-subtext-intertext; a “mass” reader gets acquainted with the work at the level of an entertaining storyline. The author of the article also analyses a mythological component of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. A mention should also be made that Fowles in the analysed work acts both as a creator and a destroyer of the socio-ethical and literary myth of the Victorian era. Of primary interest to the writer was the literary myth of the time of Queen Victoria, which in the minds of readers has long been romanticized and become a legend. Therefore, the article shows the connection of everything that happens according to the tradition of English romantic narration and the principles of reformation of characters and situations that no longer correspond to the romantic worldview. The ironic understanding of the gentleman’s code of honor and the object of his passion, the reduction of love conflicts and places of romantic meetings are illustrated by specific examples from the text of the novel. The present paper has also devoted considerable attention to the psychology of the protagonists as well as the problem of the plot and compositional unity of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. It is proved that the development of the storyline of the novel is a polystructural and polysemantic phenomenon. If Sarah’s character combines the traditional features of both “woman with a secret” and “infernal woman”, then respect for Charles’s traditional aristocracy is being called into question: it is repeatedly mentioned that he did not receive a Cambridge diploma, that he is an amateur paleontologist, that he considers the possibility of getting married for money, and that there is a very strong element of carnal passion in his romantic relationship with Sarah. The article offers the author’s commentary on the compositional completion of the novel. It is argued that the trinity of the epilogue, first of all, explains the “world-chaos” antithesis. The formula of the dissipating world, according to the author of the article, was supposed to become the basis of the postmodernist text in the original version of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”.

The article outlines three lexical-semantic fields of word-formation rows with the suffix -ment. The aim of the paper is to investigate three lexical-semantic fields which consist of the lexical-semantic field denoting improvement, confinement and feelings. To achieve this aim, the following tasks should be completed such as investigating motivation relations in derived words with the suffix -ment and analyzing their structure with the help of the applicative generative model. The methods of componential and comparative analysis and the relator language of the applicative generative model were applied for fulfilling the above-mentioned tasks. To build word-formation rows, the words are segmented according to their motivation relations. Etymological aspect is not taken into account. Every field consists of lexical-semantic groups. The lexical-semantic field denoting the action of improvement consists of fifty-eight words, which are classified into seven lexical-semantic groups. This field is represented by thirteen R-structures. The lexical-semantic field of feelings includes two lexicalsemantic groups which contain six R-structures. The lexical-semantic field of confinement includes twenty-one words represented by six R-structures. Paradigmatic relations in lexical-semantic groups were analyzed in order to illustrate interfiled connections. Synonymic rows and antonymic pairs in lexical-semantic groups and hyperonyms distinguished in lexical-semantic fields prove paradigmatic relations. Lexical-semantic fields consist of nouns because the suffix -ment generates, mainly, nomina actionis. The term word-formation row is described in the paper as this notion which is a complex unit of word-formation hasn’t been studied thoroughly yet. The word-formation row in every lexicalsemantic field is highlighted in the article. The more lexical-semantic groups comprise the lexical-semantic field, the more R-structures the word-formation row has in a lexical-semantic field. Besides, this fact proves that English words with the suffix -ment are polysemous and variable. The polysemy of these words is illustrated via interfiled connections, e.g., the word fulfillment with the meaning “a feeling of satisfaction” belongs to the lexical-semantic field of feelings, and with the meaning “the act of doing smth. that you have promised or intended to do” this word can be involved in the lexical-semantic group of achievement which belongs to the lexical-semantic field of improvement. The relator language of the applicative generative model is used to investigate R-structure of English words with the suffix -ment. This analysis helps to create word-formation rows. R=rows of artificial language and L=rows of natural language are described. The research results lead to the conclusion that three lexical-semantic fields can be characterized by polysemous character of English words with the suffix -ment which are represented by interfiled connections. The variety of R-structures comprising wordformation rows shows the variativity of the investigated words and proves the idea that words may be derived not only from verbs but also nouns and adjectives. Interfield connections in three lexicalsemantic fields demonstrate that all words with the suffix -ment can be grouped into lexical-semantic fields. It can be useful and significant for linguists to create different English dictionaries. So, the aim of the further study is to arrange all existing words with the suffix -ment into lexical-semantic fields and make an attempt to create the dictionary of R-words and L=words with the suffix -ment.

The paper presents the analysis of attendant texts in the poems of one of the authors of the American Enlightenment epoch Joel Barlow (1755 –1812) “The Vision of Columbus” (1787) and “The Columbiad” (1807). G. Genette pointed out that paratext as a system of secondary texts is the constituent part of the totality of literary work and produces its impact upon the reader. The examination of the titles, prefaces and commentaries undertaken in the paper helps to reveal means and mechanisms used by Barlow to originate the contact with the reader, and also reach the poems’ pragmatic potential. According to J. Barlow‘s intention the synergy of the text and all the paratext elements was to generate a coherent narrative of American history “from Columbus to Washington.” Comprehensive unity of the poems’ texts and their peritexts address the dual goal. First, they create a large-scale historic panorama, and on the other hand strive to implant onto readers’ minds some philosophic and political ideas having both crucial importance for the national identity formation in general, but also momentary relevance. But in “The Columbiad” paratext acquires an additional dimension of ideological and methodological guidance. The author reveals his narrative strategies defining the reading procedure. The poem’s paratext explicitly records author’s awareness of the crisis of the Enlightenment aesthetic conscience at the turn of the 18th –19th centuries. So, the comparison of paratextuality of the two poems created with an interval of 20 years at some point presents the logic of fate of the Enlightenment literature in the USA.

The paper explores a Whitmanesque influence on Igor Terentiev, a Tbilisi-based minor Futurist poet, Alexei Kruchenykh’s disciple. While residing in Georgia with Zdanevich and Kruchenykh (that’s from 1917 up until the 1920s), Terentiev would write books of poetry exhibiting an unusual typographic design as a means of enhancing the poetic effect. In one of these books (“17 Non-Sense Tools”), Whitman’s name is invoked, and the paper investigates the connection between the poets further. The paper focuses on Whitman’s and Terentiev’s approaches to the issue of poetic signification. Whitman not only works with the nature of the signifier modifying it but also tries to render it inseparable from its signified, equating names and objects with each other. Such a semiotic approach could be interpreted through the lens of the opposition “presence effects” / “meaning effects” coined by H.U. Gumbrecht. Presence effects are interpreted as “[m]aterialities of communication... are all those phenomena and conditions that contribute to the production of meaning, without being meaning themselves” (informational content. — A. Sh.) [Gumbrecht 2004: 8]. Whitman tries to integrate both “meaning effects” and “presence effects” into the body of a poetic sign. Terentiev identifies that poetic orientation of “objectifying” signifiers and tries to devise an original poetic program on its basis. Terentiev engages Whitman’s poetic semiotic so that it informs his poetics to the extent that he designs creative writing techniques aimed at a direct communication of meaning, without relying on semiotic substitutes.

From a semantic perspective the relation of concession can be defined as a specific type of contrast between two states of affairs, i.e. counterexpectative contrast, in which the conflict originates by the denial of an assumption, generated by the first state of affair or by the context. The semantic domain of concessivity has been investigated by a fair amount of studies that have explored the variety of connectives used to express concession in an Italian-Russian contrastive perspective (Biagini/Latos 2010; Biagini 2016; Biagini/Mazzoleni 2017; 2018). In this paper we focus on the Italian adverbial connective tuttavia and its Russian most frequent counterparts, i.e. odnako, tem ne menee and vsë že. The data are taken from the Italian-Russian and Russian-Italian parallel sub-sections of the Russian National Corpus. For our research we considered contemporary original texts (from 1945 until today) and we analyzed a total of 377 examples with their translations: 87 for tuttavia, 195 for odnako, 16 for tem ne menee and 79 for vsë že. The aim of this paper is to shed light on language-specific tendencies in relation to the semantic and textual expression of concession. The present Italian-Russian contrastive analysis, that exploits both qualitative and quantitative methods, investigates three different aspects: (a) the type of coding of the relation (full coding, undercoding or inferential bridging, in terms of Prandi 2004; 2006), (b) the syntactic distribution of connectives, and (c) the combination of connectives and punctuation (cf. Ferrari/Pecorari 2018; Pecorari 2019). Although interference can play a role in translation, we observed interesting differences in the data of the two languages. The results of the multi-perspective analysis show that Russian seems to assign a major semantic and textual relevance to the concessive relation than Italian, by using a richer semantic coding and by giving it a key role in the textual architecture.

The paper reviews Bulgarian conjunction bez da and Italian conjunction senza (che), introducing the subordinate clause with the relating to an unaccomplished action. The paper explores grammatical, syntactic, and semantic properties of these constructions in both languages. The similarity of semantic and functional potential of Bulgarian and Italian constructions as well as their intralingual specificity are shown.

Fixed lexical or syntactical expressions and formulae hallmark legal language. They serve both linguistic and legal purposes, and should be rendered accordingly in a target language and legal system. Most of the times, however, formulaic expressions are translated by resorting to calques, false cognates, or phrases that are uncommon in the target legal language (and legal system). This paper is aimed at exploring how and if corpus analysis can dispel doubts and help find acceptable translation candidates. As there are currently no publicly available legal corpora addressing corporate documents such as contracts and agreements, this paper wishes to bridge this gap by building and relying on an ad hoc corpus of authentic agreements written in English as a first language according to the laws of England and Wales. In this way, corpus evidence can help find equivalents and, possibly, address recurrent mistranslations from Italian into English. During the corpus analysis process, the paper shows and discusses search queries and how equivalents can be obtained. At the same time, it questions dictionary entries. The paper findings highlight that the consultation of the ad hoc corpus allows to find acceptable translations of Italian legal formulae and address recurrent mistranslations. English formulaic expressions, in fact, can be rendered satisfactorily thanks to the possibility of noticing word usages in context, keywords in contexts and collocations. Further research can encompass a wider variety of formulae and/or legal documents so that scholars and translators can be equipped with useful reference tools.

The aim of this paper is reporting an experience of theatrical translation that lies halfway between translation theory and practice. The project «Tradurre per la scena» is the result of a partnership between three institutions in the city of Bari – the Alliance française, the Kismet OperA theatre and the former Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Romanze e Mediterranee of the University. In 2008, a theatre translation team was formed at the University department to work on an Italian version of Olivier Cadiot’s Fairy Queen (P.O.L., 2002). The team thus confronted on the many problems posed in the play translation due to the author’s unbridled writing: diverse issues concerning rhythm, speed, voice, tone, wordplay, etc. Beyond the actual translation experience, the team participants had the opportunity to meet the directors and actors responsible for performing Cadiot’s text, but also to attend rehearsals and to make corrections to the translation prepared during the group translation sessions. The play, in fact, was not only represented on stage. The Italian text was published in a bilingual edition in a collection specifically created by the University department. The author of this paper believes that an illustration of this experience could be of interest to specialists in theatrical translation for several reasons: a) because it brings into play a wide range of cultural skills (linguistic, stylistic, dramaturgical, semiotic, pedagogical, etc.); b) because it constitutes one of the rare examples of collective translation, and moreover in a field that has been rather neglected by theoretical reflection; c) because it offers the rare opportunity to follow the ideally complete path of a foreign play from the stage to the publisher; d) because it closely examines the complexity of the relationship between the translator and the playwright, the actor, and even the author.

The paper explores the effects of multilingual reading with students studying several foreign languages. The importance of this study is determined by the search for better practices leading to the incorporation of all language experience of the students when proceeding with a new language. Multilingual reading is defined as a skill aiming at simultaneous perception and comprehension of several written texts in different languages translated from one authentic text. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the potential of multilingual reading in the formation of metacognitive strategies of comparison, transfer and code switching in the process of studying French and English after Russian (the students‟ native tongue). The paper examines the causes of referring to reading as a universal language skill for the enrichment of the students‟ repertoire of multilingual activities; the goals of multilingual reading; existing approaches to reading in a foreign language which have led to the idea of multilingual reading. The conclusion is drawn that to implement multilingual reading a certain level of mastery of a language under study is expected. Multilingual reading is best for incorporating into the language teaching after second foreign language is introduced. This is the time when a student is considered to be a sophisticated reader in his / her native tongue and first foreign language. The main goal of multilingual reading is to form the students‟ metacognitive strategies of comparison, transfer and code switching. The most appropriate literary genre for starting multilingual reading is popular science. Relative simplicity of its structural organization allows the readers to comprehend its meaning avoiding difficulties of reading a work of fiction full of specific stylistic devices. Besides, popular science incorporates features of science, colloquial, journalistic and feature literature styles. All things considered, popular science becomes a universal tool of multilingual reading.

The article focuses on the problems of literary translation, mainly the problems of conveying the individual style of a young adult literature author. The relevance of this topic stems from the insufficient analysis both of the notion of the individual style itself and the interconnection of the individual style and the genre of a literary text. The paper discusses the core theoretical concepts of the individual style as well as the main characteristics of young adult literature, and examines the specific features of transfering the style elements of a young adult author. The paper is based on the novel “The perks of being a wallflower” (1999) written by an American author S. Chbosky, and its translation into Russian made by E. Petrova in 2013. The purpose of the research is to identify some dominant elements of the author‟s style and to evaluate the degree of their adequacy in the Russian translation. In the course of the study, the following problems of conveying the individual style of a young adult literature author were identified: a specific narrative structure, the usage of colloquial vocabulary; a number of specific syntactical stylistic devices. The paper examines a set of examples illustrating these features of the author‟s style and analyses their translation into Russian. The analysis reveals that the author‟s individual style is often not adequately transferred, thus, alternative variants of translation that convey the key elements of the author‟s writing style may be provided. As a result, a conclusion is made that the individual style of a young adult literature author has its own peculiarities, and its appropriate preservation requires not only a general understanding of the genre‟s specific features, but the skills of a linguostylistic analysis of the text and the ability to translate certain lexical means and stylistic devices that an author can use at all language levels.

The article considers the problems of conveying verbal means of expressing humour in translation taking the American comedy “Sixteen Candles” by John Hughes as an example. The comparison of the original and its three translations (two voice-over translations and subtitles) made it possible to analyse in detail the verbal and non-verbal means of creating a humorous effect in the film and assess their interpretation in Russian in specific comic situations. Furthermore, in some cases we offer our own translation solutions. The problem of conveying humor is still one of the most difficult problems in audiovisual translation; it is often related to specific cultural peculiarities reflected in the speech of the source language speakers and the speakers of the target language. The relevance of the paper lies in the need for further research on the means of creating humour and the problems of its preservation in translation. The goal of the paper was to study the verbal and non-verbal means of creating humour in a particular comedy film, as well as to analyse and assess the effectiveness of their transfer in Russian translations. The following methods of analysing the data were employed: comparative-contrastive analysis, linguistic analysis, lexicographic analysis, situational analysis and functional-stylistic analysis. The study revealed some losses in translation usually caused by unjustified lexical replacements (mainly generalization), a change in the word‟s register (for instance, using a neutral literary word for a slang word) and resorting to outdated vocabulary. Besides that, translators often ignore non-verbal, situational means of creating humour and their influence the verbal description of the situation.

The fields of Italian finance and economics are particularly rich in the use of English loanwords, as both non-adapted and adapted Anglicisms can be retrieved in general Italian monolingual dictionaries. If we consider the specific case of audiovisual translation, it is possible to observe an increasing use of Anglicisms in the Italian dubbed versions of audiovisual products set in the world of finance. Firstly, this paper will analyze the case of the first season of Devils (2020), a financial thriller drama television series. The analysis will investigate the translation strategies used to transpose the specialized financial terminology used in the dialogues, focusing in particular on the significant presence of new Anglicisms in the target text. Secondly, the presence of these Anglicisms in the Italian dubbed version of the film The Big Short (2015) will be analyzed, in order to compare their use in both productions. Finally, the paper ends with a practice-based interlingual study involving a number of Italian undergraduate students in Economics, aiming at establishing whether they use the new Anglicisms identified in the Italian dubbed version of Devils.

The paper focuses on time marks that may be detected in common law agreements and the translation issues they imply. In the first section, the author discusses the relation between time and law. The legal time governs the social time, as it ensures order and security. If memory is the manifestation of the legal past, the promise is the expression of the legal future. Depending on the legal culture taken into account, the legislator’s time may be more or less important than the time of the judge. The second section of the paper deals with time avatars that may be identified at the macrotextual level. The contract is understood as a promise that becomes obligation. The legal time is also expressed in contracts by the predictive capability of the parties, its acceleration and backwardness, its finiteness. The last section is an analysis of the translation of terms, collocations and metaphors expressing time in common law contracts.

The paper provides an overview of the Dostoievski Society of Argentina (Sociedad Argentina Dostoievski, SAD), created in 2015. The main goal of the Society is to unite specialists in the work of F.M. Dostoevsky and Slavists. The activities of the SAD include organization of scientific conferences, meetings, seminars, round tables, edition of books and online journals. The paper examines two journals published by the SAD, outlines their scientific profile and history of creation. The journal Estudios Dostoievski, created in 2018, was conceived as a continuation of the international dialogue on the work of F.M. Dostoevsky and united the Hispanic Dostoevsky scholars. Another project of the Society — the journal Eslavia, established in the same year, became a meeting point for Slavic scholars and all those interested in Slavic culture and literature, as well as Spanish American–Slavic cultural links. The article highlights the peculiarities of these contacts, their historical background and prospects. The scientific program of the journal Eslavia consists in the publication of articles on various branches of humanitarian knowledge on the basis of the material from different Slavic countries. Estudios Dostoievski and Eslavia were awarded a gold diploma of the International Slavic Forum “Golden Knight” in Russia. The Dostoievski Society of Argentina cooperates with other national and international associations, organizes the International Slavic Readings and since 2016 has been a member of the International Dostoevsky Society (IDS).

The review traces papers of the International conference V. Nabokov and Transatlantic Relations in American and European culture hosted at Saint Petersburg State University on May14–16, 2021. Scholars in various fields of humanities traced the routes of intercontinental cultural contacts of the XX-th century to construct a global context to understand Vladimir Nabokov as a paradigmatic transatlantic figure. The main direction which was discussed in papers of D. Ioffe, T. Venediktova, G. Kruzhkov, O. Panova, A. Astvatsaturov, O. Antsyferova, I. Golovacheva, A. Shvets, O. Sokolova, traditionally turned out to be American and British. The Russian cultural context viewed through the transatlantic prism was outlined by E. Penskaya, V. Feshchenko, A. Rodionova, A. Masalov, Y. Probstein, C. Bernstein and by Marjorie Perloff. The issues of transatlantic transfer in Romanesque literatures were presented in the papers of L. Muravieva, A. Petrova, V. Popova and I. Khohlova. The speakers discussed Franco-American autofiction, the images of Americans in the works of G. Apollinaire and the history of Soviet-Latin American and Portuguese-American poetic contacts, German and Scandinavian contexts viewed the in light of transatlantic problems. Discussion of Vladimir Nabokov works summed up a kind of outcome of the conference that brought together linguists (A. Kretov, Zh. Gracheva), historians of literature and culture (D. Tokarev, A. Bolshev, N. Shcherbak, A. Stepanova, N.A. Karpov ), scholars of poetics and narratology (F. Dvinyatin, V. Schmid, E. Kazartsev, D.Yu. Dovzhenko, N.I. Emelyanova).

Several are the European Directives dedicated to e-commerce, focussing on consumer rights, the distance marketing of consumer financial services and the protection of consumers indistance contracts.In contract law, the terms “termination”, “withdrawal”and “cancellation”have peculiar and distinct meaning. Nonetheless, they tend to be misused and applied interchangeably. This article will shed light on these relevant terms in thelight of EU Directives on the protection of consumer rights in off-premises and distance contracts.To do so, it will first present instances in which the meaningand use of these terms is either clear-cut or somehow blurred. By analysing word usage and meaning in context, it will explore how EU Directives, and EU drafters in general, made(un)ambiguous distinctions. Then, it will investigate whether English-speaking drafters (such as those of the pre-Brexit UK, Ireland and Malta) made a consistent use ofsuch terms. Finally, this paper will explore whether online conditions of sale writtenin English by non-English speaking sellers or traders (such as Italian and Polish) also make a consistent use of the terms.The paper findings highlight that the use andlegal purpose of these terms in European Directives have not been particularly consistent over the years. Furthermore, Member States’system-specificity has weighed on the meaning, application and scope of the terms. On the other hand, at EU level the absence of a unique legal system of reference and the challenges of harmonization may have created false equivalences.

This paper mainly discusses the distribution and rhetorical functions of personal pronouns in English and Chinese legal news reports which is divided into two narrative types, the objective and the semi-dialogic. Through the comparative analysis of some English and Chinese legal news texts in the two types, it finds that the differences in narrative type directly affect the distribution of personal pronouns. In objective narrative, the use of third person pronouns accounts for an absolute proportion, and the frequency of using first person and second person pronouns is close to zero. In semi-dialogic narrative, the use of third person pronouns is still the highest, but only slightly higher than the use of first person and second person pronouns, accounting for only a small number. After analysis, this paper holds that there are three reasons for the uneven distribution: first, the differences between the dialogic style and the narrative style; second, the legal narrative being a story narrative; third, the specific restrictions on the use of legal rhetoric.

The paper explores basic political relations between the European Union and India which are at theoretical level almost “terra nullius”. The paper starts from the present epochal situation and enters the realm of EU–India geopolitics from the perspective of Gandhian moral practice on one side, and challenges presented by the impact of Coronavirus politics on the other. Our question is – on which platform is strategic negotiating between the EU and India possible? Despite their Lisbon summit in 2000 as well as virtual summit in 2020, it is obvious that until today the EU and India could not find a common denominator. Our idea is that the missing link of a better understanding partly lays in the new perspective that may be unexpectedly found from the Balkans’ point of view. Only unprecedented cognizance today may set up the roadmap for the times to come.

It is generally assumed that a good knowledge of the legal field is a prerequisite to deliver legal translations. This paper will challenge this assumption by presenting a case study with third-year bachelor’s students who participated in a translation project. The students, enrolled in a course in translation practice, were trained in corpus consultation at the beginning of the academic year. Nearly at the end, they translated an extract of a supply contract without being trained in the legal field. They consulted a pre-compiled offline corpus and online bilingual dictionaries. The paper findings highlight that knowledge of the legal field would have certainly helped the students make more informed decisions and avoid some mistranslations. However, the major shortcomings were actually due to ineffective corpus or dictionary consultation. In particular, formulaic expressions and collocations were neglected. In light of the paper findings, it can be speculated that in translation training, effective corpus consultation may help users deliver high-quality legal translations. It also seemed that thorough knowledge of the legal field is not a prerequisite, at least as far as short texts are concerned.

The paper presents an analysis of the novel Grendel (1971) by American writer J. Gardner (1933–1982) in light of M. Eliade’s, R. Girard’s and V. Toporov’s concepts of myth and ritual studies. Literary studies concerning the ritual-mythological aspect of the novel are reviewed in the article. The research hypothesis suggests that the key features of Gardner’s poetics can be systematically analyzed in the context of myth and ritual. Meanwhile, the bulk of previous research covering the issue tended to rely primarily on other analytical frameworks, like P. Bourdieu's sociology of literature (B. Ekelund) or the theory of intertextuality (H. Ellis, W. Ober), the myth and ritual theory playing a supplementary role. While placing myth and ritual theory at the core of the methodology, the present study highlights its two key categories singled out in line with B. Malinowski’s “functionalist” view of myth and ritual as two complementary aspects of the archaic culture — the “theoretical” one (myth) and the “practical” one (ritual). Here they are presented as the etyological nature of myth (i.e. its ability to view all phenomena as dependent on the primordial origin of the universe) and the redemptive sacrificial ritual. Accordingly, the etyologization of Grendel’s narrative and the presentation of the protagonist as an “emissary victim” (in Girard’s terms) are the specific features of Gardner’s poetics which the paper primarily addresses.

The paper traces David Burliuk’s evolution as a poet, essayist and editor in the United States, where he began his career in the pro-Soviet Russian émigré newspaper Russky Golos and then switched to his personal project — Color and Rhyme, the Burliuk family magazine. The paper examines some strategies of Burliuk's self-presentation in Color and Rhyme; since in this edition Burliuk is presented as a poet and an artist, the paper analyzes, how both of these roles of Burliuk relate to each other in the texts published in the magazine. Focusing on the English-speaking reader, Burliuk emphasized the European context of his artistic biography; other contributors that published their articles and reviews in the Color and Rhyme stressed his cultural affinity with Paul Gaugin, Expressionists, Fauvists and characterized Burliuk as “American Van Gogh”. Special attention is paid to the ways of representation of American poetry in Color and Rhyme. Burliuk’s magazine published works by members of some New York poetic communities, such as The New York Poetry Forum and The Raven Poetry Circle of Greenwich Village. In particular, it is described how Burliuk as an editor represented beginners or littleknown authors in the earlier periods of his editorial activity. The article shows that Color and Rhyme magazine can be viewed not only as a tool for “promoting” D. Burliuk's art, but also as a chronicle of his activity as a writer and artist.

Starting with a survey of historical and ideological reasons for the unprecedented rise of Western interest in Russia after 1917 and especially after the Great Depression, the paper focuses on the travel books widely read on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1930s. The decade saw the blooming of travel prose in the English-speaking world, as well as the peak of enthusiasm for Russia during the XXth century. The paper attempts a closer look at the travel books on Soviet Russia, usually dismissed by critics as lacking in the quality of writing, too ideological. First the model of stereotypical book based on short Intourist tour is described (motive structure, prevailing parroting of Soviet propaganda clichés). Next follow the books produced by Western residents in the USSR, or persons who escaped Intourist surveillance and experienced some direct contact with Soviet people. They certainly look at Russia under the Western eye, but are able (to a different degree) to empathize with the drama and tragedy of Stalin’s Russia. From half-hearted account of “fellow-traveller” M. Hindus, the paper proceeds to fundamental “Assignment in Utopia” by E. Lyons, who turned from ardent Communist into highly argumentative critic of Soviet Russia, and to the unique project of writing a comic book about kolkhoz by E.M. Delafield, that resulted in a witty critique of Soviet aims and ways. In finding their way not just around Stalin’s Russia, but in providing the reader with the road to the authors’ inner selves, these books are still relevant today.