RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism

The article describes the place and major components of the question of Byron’s influence on Pushkin in British Pushkin studies at the stage of its formation (1910s-1940s). It argues that in the context of ‘turning to Pushkin’ and orientation toward the ‘horizon of the reader’s expectations’, one of the two leading communicative strategies in British books about the Russian poet occurred to be the strategy of combating the stereotype of him as a consistent ‘Russian Byron’. At the same time, starting with M. Baring, British researchers include this issue in the strategy of bringing Pushkin closer to the British reader. The two identified strategies are, to one degree or another, combined in the Byron - Pushkin problem with the principles of historical periodization (historicization of narrative) and aesthetic evaluation, as well as with an imagologically charged cultural approach. The article reveals convergences and divergences in this issue of two key works of the highlighted period - An Outline of Russian Literature (1914) by M. Baring and A History of Russian Literature by D.S. Mirsky (1926). It is argued that Baring declaratively emphasizes Pushkin’s innovation in the re-creation of Byron’s genre forms, the hero and the features of poetics, highlights the depth of ‘Russianness’ of Pushkin’s works and asserts the superiority of the Russian poet over the English one in poetic skill and worldview. Mirsky, relying on the well-known work of V.M. Zhirmunsky and largely following Baring, fights the stereotypical idea of Pushkin’s imitation of Byron from the position of philological accuracy. It has been established in the article that in the context of the Cold War, orientation towards the ‘horizon of the reader’s expectations’ in J. Lavrin’s book Pushkin and Russian Literature (1947) formed the vector for ‘exalting’ Pushkin as a way of ‘justifying’ Russian culture and history. The tangible center of such an imagologically colored rapprochement was Lavrin’s analytical analysis of Pushkin’s polemic with Byron based on the material of his lyrical-heroic poem Poltava.

The aim of this study is to publish a letter from F.I. Tyutchev to his second wife E.F. Tyutcheva dated to September 24 (October 9), 1853. The article was written as a result of work with the translation of an autograph of the letter stored in the archive of the National Library of Russia. The letter contains the poem “Neman”. Correspondence with E.F. Tyutcheva is of great interest to the researcher, since the spouses touch upon not only family, personal, or secular topics, but also discuss historical events and social issues. F.I. Tyutchev manifests himself as a thinker turning to an equal interlocutor. Philosophical poetry of F.I. Tyutchev, dedicated to the historical events of 1812, correlates with the general aesthetic orientation of his work. Of particular importance is the fact that some of his poems with reflections on difficult phenomena of history, human being, and sensual world are either dedicated or addressed in letters to E.F. Pfeffel-Dörnberg (Tyutcheva). Poetics of lyrical fragments of F.I. Tyutchev is considered within the framework of the approach proposed by Yu.N. Tynyanov, relying on biographical materials indicated in the monographs of K.V. Pigarev and V.V. Kozhinova. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the autograph of the letter from September 24 (October 9), 1853 was deciphered and translated from French for the first time. The study revealed that the text of the letter containing the famous poem by F.I. Tyutchev “Neman” is significantly different from that published earlier, in 1914.

The focus of research attention is concentrated on the features of the American ‘new journalism’ of the 1960s-80s, and the influence of its narrative and stylistic techniques on the prose and journalism of S.D. Dovlatov during the emigrant period of his work. The problem is to study the collections “Compromise” and “Speech for no reason... or Editor’s columns” in the context of the ‘new journalism’ in the USA, identifying the specific methods and techniques of this phenomenon used by Dovlatov. The authors of the article, based on Dovlatov’s immersion in the context of new American journalism and the proximity of its creative views to the principles put forward by T. Wolfe and his environment, consistently trace the influence of ‘new journalism’ on poetics of the emigrant collections. One of the key features of the new American journalism was desire to present reliable information using artistic techniques, thereby not only changing reader’s perception of the materials, but making them even more capable of eliciting a strong emotional response. As a result of the analysis of Dovlatov’s selected collections, some techniques and features of the ‘new journalism’ were discovered: the real basis of the plot; narration on behalf of a character associated with the personality of the author; dialogue; composite installation; details; internal monologue and specific punctuation. The use of these tools allowed Dovlatov not only to create the effect of the reliability of what is happening, but also to demonstrate the author’s position, entering into an indirect dialogue with the reader.

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of “life” as understood by F.A. Iskander and to explain the genre specificity of his later works through a content analysis of metaphorical structures in the collections of essays, notes, and short stories by the writer. If his earlier works are mostly collections of short stories and novel-in-short stories, then later in his career he turns to such genres as collections of essays and notes. The focus of this study will be on the collections “A little about a lot” and “From notebooks”, the essays “Stalin and Vuchetich”, “State and conscience”, “Poets and kings”, “Mozart and Salieri”, and “Reflections of a writer”, as well as the short story “The plot of existence”. Life is not contrasted with death, and Iskander does not insist on the triumph of the positive over the negative in his work. Through this research, the author will draw the following conclusions. In his later work, Iskander departs from the conceptual metaphor of “life as wholeness”. He argues that only the depiction of life through art or theory can be considered complete, while life itself is inherently fragmented. He believes that only ideas founded on humanistic principles can bring some harmony to the chaotic nature of life. The main feature of Iskander’s later writings is fragmentation, which is based on associative thinking.

The paper examines originality and dynamics of the butterfly image in Portuguese poetic texts of the 16th-19th centuries. This issue has not been considered before that determines the relevance and novelty of our article. The poems of L.V. de Camões, M.M. du Bocage, J. Dinis, J. de Deus are used as material. The work focuses on the problem of continuity, development and expansion of the traditional symbolism of a recurrent image steadily reproduced in world literature and metaphorically used to depict the inner personal world. Results of the study indicate that the image of butterfly in Portuguese poetry has significant specificity. The semantics of love in its most diverse manifestations comes to the fore. The traditional symbolism of “butterfly as a woman” is replaced by a stable associative parallel “butterfly as he, flower or flame as she”. The association with feelings and soul experiencing renewal (Dinish) is also relevant. The author’s parallel “zealous service and duty fulfillment” (Camões) is less conventional, but original. Thus, in Portuguese poetry, the literary semantics of the butterfly image is diverse. It is characterized by both continuity and creative increments of meaning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the genesis of the work of Zhang Jie, a major Chinese prose writer of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century. The authors of the article quote the writer’s repeated acknowledgements of the enormous influence that Anton Pavlovich Chekhov had on her work, but most importantly, they try to determine in what exactly, at what levels of form and content this influence manifested itself. Correlations in sphere of genre and thematic formations, poetic techniques and essential dominants of Russian writer’s style, which later appeared quite clearly in Zhang Jie’s works, are revealed: restraint, brevity, lyricism, and ‘objectivity’ as it was understood by the Russian classicist. The article speaks of the presence in Zhang Jie’s works of Chekhov’s characteristic motifs, Chekhov’s ambivalent attitude to ‘the little man’, Chekhov’s exposure of vulgarity, and condemnation of slave psychology. At the same time, the flexibility of perception of artistic thought of the predecessor, elements of dialogue in the circumstances of modern times, and national specifics are noted. Significant assistance in writing the article was provided by reference to Chekhov’s collection of works on literary labor, a translation of which was published in China in the mid-20th century and which was undoubtedly carefully read by Zhang Jie. The present study based on the works of A. Veselovsky on genetic and typological aspects of interaction between literatures of different peoples allowed us to conclude about the determining role of A. Chekhov in the formation of Zhang Jie’s writing. The article is intended to contribute to the study of the dialogue of cultures.

The article examines peculiarities of representation of russia in British online sources in 2022, when russia launched a special military operation in ukraine. the author used a statistical approach to analysis based on the factiva monitoring system, the database of which contains about 4.5 million texts published on 416 British online resources from January 1 to december 31, 2022 at both national and regional levels. sentiment analysis (factiva version) was used to determine the tone of the messages. the analysis showed that in 2022, russia ranked fourth in terms of number of articles with its mention in the analyzed corpus of texts, the first being the united Kingdom itself, the second, the united states, and the third, ukraine. from the point of view of the agenda-setting theory (mcCombs, shaw), this fact indicates the high importance of russia for the uK media. most often, materials mentioning russia on British online resources in 2022 were published by the national editions of “the financial times”, “the independent” and “the times”. at the regional level, the largest number of text materials mentioning russia was found: in england - on the website of the radio station “City am online”; in northern ireland - on the website of “lurgan mail”; in Wales - on the website of “the Western mail”; in scotland - on the portal “thescottishsun.co.uk”. the British media were more focused on covering the non-military aspects of the russian-ukrainian conflict, mainly, on political and economic problems. In general, the neutral tone of this set of materials prevailed, that is explained by the absolute dominance of short non-evaluative information messages in it. This is true for both national and regional publications. At the same time, materials of a negative tone prevail over positive ones when it comes to Russia. A difference was found in the intensity of negative coverage of Russia in national and regional online sources in the UK. The most rigid position is taken by national British sources. Among the regional ones, the negative focus on online resources in England is greater, and sources in Scotland and Northern Ireland show the least negative tone.

As an increasing number of scientists utilize alternative communication platforms such as TikTok to disseminate scientific information, there is a pressing need to investigate their potential for scientific communication, particularly with younger audiences. A content analysis of 163 posts under four hashtags (#researchpaper, #scientificarticle, #socialscience, and #pewresearch) revealed that TikTok is indeed being employed as a medium for sharing scientific content, including research results. It is notable that some publications make direct references to scientific articles and monographs, indicating the potential of the platform to bridge the gap between the academic community and a wider audience. However, short videos on TikTok generate more engagement when authors share experiences and tips rather than research results. While TikTok is becoming an important channel for scientific communication, it is mainly used as an additional means and not a replacement for traditional media such as academic journals or new resources like preprint servers. Additionally, no formats or examples of content were identified that could be considered a replacement for traditional methods of communicating scientific information. Further research is necessary to investigate the impact of TikTok on science communication across different disciplines and age groups.

Artificial intelligence technologies are gradually becoming more common in modern society. The political sphere is not left aside, where these technologies are also being considered and are beginning to be applied. The purpose of this research is to identify the features of the presentation of texts generated by one of the most popular online services, neural network ChatGPT, for key text queries associated with two approaches to the issue of the political status of Taiwan: considering Taiwan as part of the Chinese People’s Republic or as an independent and sovereign territorial entity. Quantitative content analysis and frame analysis are used as basic methods. The information array of data consists of the results obtained from two text queries: “Taiwan as an independent entity in...” and “Taiwan as part of China in...” for four time points (2010, 2015, 2020 and 2023), selected based on the principle of equal distance and the period of the study (2023). The total number of words for analysis was 1402. The study found that for a text query directly related to the independent and sovereign political status of Taiwan, artificial intelligence generates larger texts than for a text query related to the statement of its territorial affiliation with the PRC. From the point of view of symbolic words/expressions-markers, indicating a particular approach to the specified political issues, the content generated by artificial intelligence revealed the absolute advantage of words/expressions-markers, symbolically reflecting the idea of the independent and sovereign political status of Taiwan, and not its territorial affiliation with the PRC. Possible reasons for such a distribution of the frequency of occurrence of the specified words/expressions of markers in the information array are indicated. The presence of at least three common frames in the entire information array has been established, which are designated as follows: “Independent entity”, “The part of China” and “Tensions and confrontation”.

The concept of “Journalist Digital Intelligence” (JDI), its scope and content are the result of the authors’ own reflections based on the works of P. Bourdieu (theory of the individual’s social capital) and P. Yuhyun (norms of the individual’s digital intelligence). The authors of the article study JDI in relation to a journalist’s personality and test it in the context of journalistic activity, while the JDI is updated instrumentally - in relation to media education. In the process of self-identification, a budding journalist is immersed not only in the media space, but also in the digital space. The success of his or her professionalization and social adaptation depends on how well he or she is able to use the advantages of digitalization and how resistant he or she is to its threats. The authors propose to modify the criteria for assessing the quality of university journalism training, adapted to the JDI and taking into account the latest media transformations. The results of a pilot survey of 375 respondents show that it is necessary to add to the existing characteristics of digital intelligence those necessary for a media specialist (in line with the JDI): digital literacy, creative skills, critical thinking, reflection and motivation. Their sum will reflect an individual portrait of a digital personality and will make it possible to assess the level of readiness of a person to enter the media space as a subject of journalistic activity.