The collection of articles is concerned with the main problems of fiction and non- fiction genres co-existence. “Literature and Document” covers different aspects of “document” and “documentary”, some questions of correlation between truth and fiction in literature, the first principles of bringing into focus and separating documentary from fictionary in different texts, from the Middle Ages to the XXth century. Close attention is given to cooperation of literary and historical realities and to the shaping of complex, manysided concept of document. The authors of the following collective work, each of them, defined a document for themselves and chose a concept to follow; they tried to present and comment all possible approaches and aspects of the problem. This book is an intersiciplinary scientific research created at the borderline of literary studies, history and culturology.

This collection is continuing a series of publications on different problems of mass literature prepared by IWL RAS researchers, with the participation of experts from other scientific institutions. The book analyzes poetics of a genre that is always popular with the wide range of readers – a detective story during its early development (the 19th – beginning of the 20th century). On material of English, American, French, Italian, German, Norwegian and Chinese literatures the research highlights, beside the classics of the genre, some little-known works; the mutual influence of certain authors and works is examined. Special attention is paid to boundary phenomena, some genre and stylistic forms related to detective stories (science fiction, crime and spy novels).

This book considers the dynamics of change of literary trends in the USA literature in the light of an actual synergetic theory where the literary process appears as unsteady and unlinear, in the every point giving the new picture that can be reconstructed only taking in account the whole sum of its phenomena. Such approach allows to investigate the development of the American literature in the historical movement of its specific constant features that form this or that trends. The dynamics of trends is analyzed both in synchronous and diachronic key. Parallel with the linear approach that makes an accent on removability of trends and styles, the archeological one is also employed — it deals with the neighbor and heterogeneous strata of national culture in their dynamic interaction. This work examines only some themes, ideological and aesthetic constants, genres, problems and authors of the American literature, but they seem to be important and demonstrative for the whole picture of national literary process. For the first time are investigated the role and evolution of the categories of due and real, the phenomenon of correlation of sentimental and romantic, the movement of the narrator’s point of view from romanticism to modernism, the dialectics of canon as literary factor, transformation of the model of black race in the mainstream literary tradition, genesis of postmodern detective, the influence of English romanticism on the American poetry (on the example of the poetry of R.P. Warren), synthesis of various trends in the works of W. Faulkner that demonstrates the common tendency of the contemporary literature.

The collection is a grateful and friendly tribute of colleagues to Vsevolod Alexandrovich Keldysh on the occasion of his 90th birthday. V.A. Keldysh is a remarkable scientist, founder, inspirator and long-term head of the Department of Russian literature on the turn of the century (A.M. Gorky Institute of the World Literature RAS); he is a founder of scientific school, one of the leading world experts on the literature of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. Colleagues and students in their articles cover different faces of the literature of the 19–20th centuries, from Dostoevsky to Brodsky.

This collection includes articles and documents publications which are sourced in the archive material from the funds of the Manuscript Department and, A.M. Gorky’s Archive of the Gorky Institute of the World Literature RAS and the State Archive of the Russian Federation. Archival publications are provided with textological preface and academic commentary. The articles throw light on the content of little-known funds, their components commenting the historical and literature process in Russia of the first post-revolutionary decades (the funds of the State Publishing House, the National Union of Composers and Playwrights, the National Association of Peasant Writers) as well as personal funds (Demyan Bedny’s, A.N. Chicherin’s, K.A. Lipskerov’s, K.F. Piskunov’s funds).

The group work “The History of National Literatures” with a new subtitle “Origins. Stages. Poetics” in continuing a series of papers concerning literatures of peoples of the Russian Federation and the “near abroad” (Ukrainian, Armenian, Tatar, Abkhazian, Belorussian, Ingush, the peoples of the North, etc.) in historical, cultural, comparative and poetologic aspects. The work introduces new names and facts of national literatures.

The book is the first academic description of the manuscript of A.P. Platonov’s main novel Chevengur (1927–1929). The autograph got in different cities is restored on material of two writer’s funds in the Manuscript Departments of IRL and IWL, the history of the consolidated novel manuscript is reconstructed. Different stages of the author’s work on the autograph and the consolidated manuscript including handwritten and typed pages are presented by the method of dynamic transcription. The book is illustrated with the autograph pages kept in manuscript departments of two academic institutes.

The third issue of the collective work Aleksey Tolstoy: Dialogues with Time, as well as the previous two, released in 2014 and 2017, is devoted to the life and works of the Russian writer Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1883−1945). The collective work was carried out in line with preparation of the Aleksey Tolstoy’s Complete Works at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The authors of the volume are the researchers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Samara, Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Kursk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Odessa (Ukraine), Prague (Czech Republic), Parma (Italy), Jerusalem (Israel) who represent various academic institutes, universities, archives, museums, both the young ones and those who have been studying Tolstoy’s life and works for a long time. The book is addressed to philologists and to everyone interested in the history of the Russian literature of the first half of the 20th century and A.N. Tolstoy’s heritage.

The collection “Dynamical Poetics / Poetical Dynamics” is dedicated to the anniversary of Professor Dina Makhmudovna Magomedova, Head of the Russian Classical Literature department in RSUH and the leading research associate of IWL RAS. The articles of Russian, Polish and Japanese researchers included in this book cover the problems of poetics and history of the Russian literature, particularly the Silver Age, as well as the questions of genre dynamics and poetics of the lyric. The book is intended, firstly, for expert philologists and philology faculty students.

This book covers the wide range of problems concerning the study of allegory: its functioning in different culture contexts, its adaptation to change of epoch, its specifics depending on the genre where it is used; forms it takes. The study deals with varied aspects of existence of allegory in the texts from different epochs and literary movements — from late antiquity to romanticism. Allegory comes across as an ambiguous, polifunctional, mobile method the use and reception of which is constantly changing. The offered book is the first Russian research of the evolution of the “allegory” concept from antiquity to the 20th century. It would be useful for experts on the world literature, literary theorists, and philological students.

The book of a famous Russian literature researcher and philosopher Svetlana Grigorievna Semyonova (1941–2014) deals with Andrei Platonov, the most metaphysical writer of the 20th century. The study covers the main body of his prose and drama, from the stories “Epifan Locks”, “Ethereal Tract” and “The Sea of Youth” to the novels Chevengur and Happy Moscow, from the short stories of the 1920-ies to the war prose, from the play “The Hurdy Gurdy” to the grotesque satirical mystery “Noah’s Ark”. S.G. Semyonova relies on her own methodology whereby literature is a figurative and artistic form of the philosophic acquisition of reality where metaphysics is inextricably linked with poetics. She examines Platonov’s “idea of life”, fundamental constants of his worldview (death, affinity, memory, Eros, body, substance of being, etc.), taking a close look at the deepest levels of the text, its plots, images, style, specific features and details of the author’s artistic world. In the second part of the book there are two S.G. Semyonova’s articles representing attempts made in different times to describe Platonov’s “repetitive” and “permanent” ideals, make a philosophical outline of his works. In the final part of the book there is S.G. Semyonova’s interviews and a collection of her diary records showing how the Platonov’s “idea of life” and Fyodorov’s idea of resurrection, reconstruction of panhuman relationship are evolving side by side in the life of one of the leading Russian Platonov scholars and, at the same time, a publisher/researcher of N.F. Fyodorov’s heritage. The book is intended for philologists and philosophers, teachers and students interested in the history of Russian culture.

The monograph of L. Spiridonova is an academic paper where the main theoretical problems of textual studies are raised and solved on the vast material of editional practice of the second half of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century, such as preparing complete scientific and academic collected works of classics, the choosing a source of a main text, the problems of “an author’s will”, censor and self-censor, publishing authors belonging to the Russian Diaspora abroad, unfinished works, text reconstruction, etc. Theoretical conclusions are supported with specific examples from the history of preparation of classics’ collected works. The book presents a brief essay of textology since the second half of the 20th century till nowadays and analyzes the existing textology schools and areas (German, French, Anglo-American and Russian). The book would be useful not only for scholars but also for publishers, editors, under- and postgraduate students of liberal arts schools.

The monograph deals with the history of reception and interpretation S.A. Yesenin’s works in Poland between wars. Special attention is paid to the analysis of basic premises, common patterns, differences and similarities of the translational and critical reception of Yesenin’s works in Poland in terms of reception strategies and dynamics in different European countries and regions. A synthetical research of this kind has been taken for the first time. According to periodization representing the way in which Yesenin was received in Poland, the monograph has three parts dedicated to the initiate period of reception (1918–1925), the second part of the 1920-ies and the 1930-ies. Appendix includes Polish writers and critics’ articles and reviews about Yesenin in 1920-30-ies translated into Russian, and the facsimile of the book :Sergey Yesenin. Confessions of a Hooligan and Other Poems. Trans. by K.A. Javorski. Helm. 1935. Lino prints by Zenon Wasnievski. The book also has the name index. The monograph would be useful both for those who study Russian literature in our country and abroad and for general reader interested in S.A. Yesenin’s works.

The monograph explores the old Russian texts of the first third of the 17th century, dedicated to the events of the Time of Troubles, as a macrocycle unique in the history of Old Russian literature, which recorded the moment of the beginning of the transformation of genre forms traditional for medieval literature and methods of depicting historical events and persons. For the first time in Russian medieval studies, an attempt is made to comprehensively review the poetics of the corpus of journalistic and historical works of contemporaries about the Time of Troubles. On the basis of the analysis of macro- and micro-poetic means of image covered in the tradition and new methods of narration in the little-studied and otherwise studied texts, the question is raised of the origin of a new type of historical narrative in the first third of the 17th century Russian literature. The book is intended for medieval scholars, teachers, students and all interested in the Russian medieval literature.

The monograph deals with I.S. Shmelev’s works in the light of traditions of the Russian literature of the19th century. Literary continuity is demonstrated at the descriptive, genre and typological levels on examples of some I.S. Shmelev’s works and specific texts of I.S. Turgenev, A.P. Chehov and F.M. Dostoevsky. The author convincingly shows that Shmelev is not only a worthy successor of the traditions of Russian classics but also an artistic innovator who developed and enriched it with his own artistic methods, deep ideas and bright images. New meanings are found out in Shmelev’s stories and novels and deep contextual layers are discovered. Shmelev’s publicist works concerning these authors when he acts as a gifted literary critic is seriously considered. It is particularly important to note that a creatively learned tradition gets new meanings, reinforces the link of time and stabilizes.