Folk narratives about two women who practice gathering, one of whom treacherously murders the other, and about the victim’s children who kill the murderer’s children and run away, are recorded in the Pacific region of the United States, in Chaco, in Eastern Indonesia, in Tibet, in East Africa (only one text) and (without the motif of killing children) in Western Siberia. The characters are mostly animal characters who behave like humans. There is no doubt that specialists who study cultures of particular regions are familiar with the relevant publications, but the transcontinental parallels for such stories have never been researched. The American versions demonstrate an area correlation with the Western Stemmed Tradition that is considered now to be as old as the Clovis tradition (13,250–12,800 cal BP) if not earlier. If so, the spread of the tale in question should be dated to the time of the initial settlement of America. The sets of motifs in the Indonesian versions are slightly closer to the American ones, while the Tibetan sets share more motifs with the Siberian tradition and have American parallels as well. In addition to the presented materials in the light of data on the settlement of the world by modern man, the author addresses questions of the genres of traditional narratives

The article discusses the plot, designated in the catalog of fairy tale types as “Borma Yaryzhka” (AaTh 485A): the hero is sent to the overseas kingdom, which is overrun by serpents, to obtain the royal regalia (~ to the city of Babylon for the crown); he fulfills his mission and returns; having three adventures on the way back (blinding the one-eyed ogre; escaping the sexual captivity of the ‘forest woman’; helping the lion in his fight with the enemy and then showing him the ‘power of hops’). It focuses on the literary sources of the plot frame (such as The Tale of the Babylonian Kingdom, The Parable of the City of Babylon, the Legend of Leo the Philosopher by Archbishop Anthony) and their origin; analyses the description of the hero’s adventures on his way back home and their genesis; discusses how this source material was assembled into a stable composition of an adventure tale. The conducted research leads us to the conclusion that The Tale of the Babylonian Kingdom is a Russian reworking of a Byzantine oral legend which over time absorbed a number of ‘wandering’ literary subplots. Their montage (unlikely to happen in the oral tradition) was probably modeled on the compositional patterns typical for books about the misadventures of returning heroes. Stories circulating in the tradition, which corresponded to a similar theme, provided the necessary materials. Thus, a long adventure story was created and later adapted by oral tradition. Analysis of its folkloric versions points to the previous existence of manuscript texts now lost, but their content can be partially restored from the available oral archives. Moreover, certain correspondences between the Russian adventure tale and the ones that come from geographically, historically and culturally distant parts (Latin, Arabic, Chinese), show that in the past there were some ‘intermediate links’ which connected them. Consequently, it is possible to hypothesize the existence of rich currents of manuscript texts, remotely connecting the whole ‘reader space’ of Eurasia and North Africa.

This paper examines the origins of two legends that are close in structure and content: the Western European tale of Melusine and the Chinese tale of the White Snake. The author accepts Ding Naitong's conclusion about the genetic link between the ancient story of the taming of a shape-shifting empousa (witch or lamia) by Apollonius of Tyana in the 3rd century biography written by Lucius Flavius Philostratus and a) late medieval Chinese tales of the White Snake, beginning with the story of Feng Menlong in the 17th century, and b) Western European stories of marriages with demonic women from the 12th and 13th centuries, including Walter Map’s Henno cum dentibus. On this basis, and with the help of additional data, mainly a fragment of Nizami’s Iskandar-nāmeh and two stories from Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) collection Yijian zhi (“Records of Yi Jian”), an attempt has been made to clarify the relationship between all these plots, as well as between them and the Melusine legend. The article raises the question of a possible connection between the figure of Xu Xuan, who was the protagonist of Feng Menglong’s tale, and Apollonius of Tyana as a character in a mythological narrative.

The article considers the problem of early modern anticlericalism through the lens of topos studies. It is argued that the anticlerical description of the priest possesses the same traits in various philosophical and historical texts of the 17–18th centuries written by authors who did not share the same views even on the clergy. These traits, ambition and avarice, lead to the tyranny of the religious leaders, which is established by means of superstition and ritual (not by direct violence). Tyranny leads to the corruption of the laity, both morally and religiously. This description derives from Christian Antiquity when the predominantly rhetorical topos of the tyrant is projected onto the figure of the bishop. In patristic texts, this topos served as the cultural antimodel, as opposed to the image of the saintly bishop. The realization of this or that model depended on the qualities (vices or virtues) of the person carrying out the bishop’s duties. In the early modern texts, this topos is at the core of the image of the clergy as a whole, which is used to criticize the state of priests in general. The explanatory framework of this corrupted character of the clergy (which may vary) appears later than the stable image of vicious priests.

The article deals with the phenomenon of mystical experiences inspired by pictorial images and literary texts within the framework of female mysticism in Germany at the end of the 13th — first half of the 14th centuries. The article consists of a preface and two parts. The preface briefly discusses the influence of local speech practices and particular image systems, developed and existing in everyday monastic life, on the content of ecstatic contemplations described by medieval charismatics. In part one, this influence is demonstrated through the example of one of the nocturnal ecstasies of Margaret Ebner, a nun of the Dominican convent of Maria-Medingen on the Danube (1330s-1340s). In part two, we consider the Beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg’s (last third of the 13th century) vision of God in the form of a sphere: it was by, inspired by the anonymous “Book of the XXIV Philosophers” (second half of the 12th century), very popular among German mystics and philosophers of the late Middle Ages. At the end of the article, the author raises the question of how the specificity and status of the literary and pictorial image, which had become a fact of mystical experience, was changing. At the same time, the new spiritual practice of self-determination, opposed by charismatics to traditional church piety, is briefly touched upon.

The Spiritual Canticle (El Cántico espiritual), the central work of the Spanish poet and mystic St. John of the Cross (1542–1591), has long been a subject of textual debate. We refer here to the attribution to St. John of the Cross of the redaction of the Canticle which for over three centuries has been published as the definitive version. The article describes the history of the first publications of the Canticle and helps to understand the difficulties of authenticating this version, preserved only in the manuscripts of copyists. The author highlights the main formal and substantive differences between so-called primitive version and the definitive version, and provides the main arguments and counter-arguments of the controversy regarding the authenticity of the latter version. Furthermore, the author offers her own resolution to this problem, based on her experience of translating both texts. A number of specific words and expressions, an excess of biblical quotations, repetitions of what previously was attributed as St. John’s comments to the poem, among other issues, lead to the conclusion that the composer of this version cannot be St. John of the Cross. The discussion of this issue and the conclusions drawn are of particular importance for the preparation of the first critical edition of The Spiritual Canticle in Russian, edited by the author of the article.

This article examines the problem of mystical and religious foundations of morality, which are interconnected, first of all, with the inner world of a person - with duty, conscience, self-esteem. In what follows two theories of conscience are analyzed, compared and contrasted: those of the fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle and those of the philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. The main attention is paid to the comparative analysis of the idea of conscience in the mysticism of Rolle and in Hegel’s moral philosophy. If for Rolle conscience is the voice of the supreme transcendent God, for Hegel conscience is a generalized voice of significant others transferred to the inner plane, which is conditioned by a person’s political views or social position. These points of view do not exclude each other: one focuses on how conscience matures, how it is formed on the basis of mystical aspiration and love for God, while the other focuses on the mechanism of functioning of a mature conscience, which realizes itself in society in a sense of duty. According to Rolle, conscience is the beating of an inner intelligence. In the absence of this, we are unlikely to act upon the knowledge that conscience presents to us. According to Hegel, conscience is the divine voice with immediate knowledge of existence. But to goad us into action conscience must be more than this; its content incorporates an experience with a religious or spiritual quality that is beyond conceptual analysis.

The great Armenian poet Grigor Narekatsi (Gregory of Narek; venerated as a saint of the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic Churches and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Francis in 2015) was canonized and numbered among the saints of the Armenian Church thanks to his poem “Book of Lamentations”. His Vita, rich with tales about his miracles, arose within the framework of medieval Armenian literature. One of the most striking episodes of his Life is the legend which tells that one day during self-forgetful prayer, in a vision Narekatsi saw the Mother of God holding the Christ Child in her arms. As confirmation of the historical veracity of Narekatsi’s vision lines from his works are cited in the Vita. This episode from the Life was widely disseminated by means of oral retelling and was also presented as a separate wonder narrative. At the same time, among the images related to Narekatsi, his vision has also been illustrated more than any other, both in Armenian manuscripts and in the engravings in early printed books. The article traces the gradual development of this iconographic form, from the marginal and page miniatures of the manuscripts to the engravings of the two printed commentaries (1745, 1801) dedicated to the “Book of Lamentations”.

The article is devoted to the history of Soviet comics in the 1940s through the example of the Krokodil magazine. The first part discusses stereotypes about the history of comics in the USSR, analyses the concept of the comic strip as the main form of comics in the Soviet period, and considers the use of Media studies as a framework. The purpose of the article is to examine the work of Krokodil as a space for the development of the Soviet comic strip, through R. Duncan’s and M. J. Smith’s communication model of the comic book. The second part explores the process of work of the magazine’s artists, the censorship by various gatekeepers’ actors, the typical features of the visual language of the Soviet comic strip, the distribution and perception of comic strips and the magazine itself. It is especially noted that the distinction between caricature and comic strip is not typical for the 1940s, and it will emerge only by the 1960s. The article also provides a parsing of a corpus of diaries from the 1940s, in which memories of Krokodil are highlighted. The hypothesis of H. Alaniz about the special role of comics during the Great Patriotic War is verified and questioned.

The article is devoted to a study of the artistic phenomenon of textuality in contemporary Russian art from 2010 to 2022. The works of contemporary artists (Ivan Simonov, Timofey Radya, Vladimir Abikh, Vladimir Logutov, Semyon Motolyants, Mayana Nasybullova), whose creative practices give the text, phrases, words, statements a lead role, are analyzed here. The works of these artists have not yet been studied in detail by art historians, art critics, and culturologists, but nowadays their creations are widely featured at Russian and foreign exhibition halls, auctions, museums and private collections. The article pays special attention to the various art forms and medias — from painting to installation, from photography to street art and performance. It considers various types of connections between the word, its image, object and semantic meanings, and analyzes the dialogues between the verbal and the visual in the Russian contemporary art. Contemporary artists often work with narratology and visual language, subtle linguistic and pictorial categories. The semantic content of many artworks is multilayer and polysyllabic. The author comes to the conclusion that verbal-visual art is an established trend on the Russian art scene, closely related to the Moscow conceptual circle (Ilya Kabakov, Victor Pivovarov, Eric Bulatov, Andrey Monastyrski, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid).

The paper analyzes anonymous handwritten corrections in a copy of a propagandist play, “Darkness” (T’ma, 1927), by T. M. Martynov. The author suggests that the anonymous editor worked in the Nizhny Novgorod Krai’s Department of Public Education (Nizhkraiono), which was responsible for overseeing theatrical work. The author distinguishes factographic, stylistic and ideological emendations. The latter include the elimination of derogatory remarks about the main character (a peasant woman) in the speech of positive characters, as well as a radical change in the ending. In the new version, the heroine’s husband does not abandon her, but only threatens to do so unless she learns to read and write, and asks the village healers for help. The author concludes that the handwritten corrections corresponded to two key tenets of the epoch. According to the first one, the peasants were not as responsible for their ignorance as was the “old regime”, and thus their misdeeds deserved indulgence (this idea, in particular, was reflected in so called agitation trials). On the other hand, criticism of the backwardness of the Soviet countryside should be accompanied by demonstration of the peasantry’s transition to a new life; this idea can be observed in numerous guides for sel’kors (‘village correspondents’). Therefore, the corrections to the play smoothed out the critical angles of the original play and suggested its approximation to the current ideological attitudes.

The article examines the phenomenon of (media)presence as a projectional embodiment of objects in theatre. The aim is to describe techniques of using projectional surfaces and devices in performances, using as material Western European productions of the 2000s and 2010s. We attempt to identify and elucidate the modes of presence through the use of projectional images in theatre. The theoretical and methodological framework employed in the article includes a set of ideas at the intersection of theatre, visual, and media studies. Such a framework makes it possible to define performance as a visual event — the act of looking, and to shift the focus from technological artifacts to the processes of mediation of presence by projectional images. We introduce the concept of “(media) presence” as relevant for a productive description of the phenomenon. (Media)presence is the effect of being in the perceptual field of objects of perception, when their physical absence is compensated for by the presence of their screen substitutes. The use of projectional technologies in theatre allows one to achieve the effect of (media)presence through mediation of “life” performances. The ways in which directors utilize projectional surfaces and devices activate several modes of performative embodiment of perceptional objects through projectional images: “absent”, “composite” and “augmented” (media)presence. The text offers a complex analysis of practices of using projectional images in contemporary theatre aimed at achieving the effect of (media)presence.

The article is devoted to a private letter written at the end of November 1812 in Tula and preserved in a small archive of the Tula and Kaluga noblemen, the Ievlevs. Analysis of the document allows us to identify the author — Pavel Svechin, an official under the Tula governor, as well as the addressees of the letter — the landowner Alexander Prokofievich Ievlev and his son Peter. The name of the author of the addendum and others mentioned in the letter as well as the circumstances in which the epistolary text appeared, have been established. The reason for writing the letter was the news from the battlefields, which reached the provincial town and were passed on, probably to the estate where the addressees lived. However, the events of the Patriotic War were presented in a semi-fantastic form: the dates, names of commanders, and events were mixed up. The author of the letter does not seem to care much for the credibility or accuracy of the information conveyed. The only news that was transmitted without distortion concerns the bestowal of the Order of St. George, First Class, and the title of Prince of Smolensk upon Field Marshal Kutuzov. The article focuses on the reasons for the appearance of distortions and the mechanism of rumor formation; conclusions are drawn about what really worried the Tula landowners in the late autumn of 1812. The letter is published with a detailed commentary.

The literary heritage of V. G. Korolenko has not yet been compiled in its entirety. Literary texts of various orientations, correspondence with various persons, and articles that were published in the provincial periodical press have not been taken into account or introduced into scholarly circulation. This publication presents two articles by Korolenko from 1904 which have been overlooked by scholars: an obituary, “Theodor Herzl (To the half-year anniversary of his death)”, and a book review of K. A. Skalkovsky “Materials for a Physiology of Russian Society. "A Little Chrestomathy for Adults"”. These articles are extremely important for understanding both Korolenko’s work and the literary and social circumstances in Russia and in general in Europe during the local conflicts (in the South African republics, the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Russo-Japanese War) and the First World War. At this time, the “national-patriotic” issue was becoming more relevant, as the major international interview published in early 1904 by the French weekly La Revue amply demonstrates. 41 politicians and cultural figures took part in this interview, including A. France, O. Mirbeau, A. de Gubernatis, K. Kautsky, F. Kossuth, C. Lombroso, M. Maeterlinck, N. K. Mikhailovsky, T. Mommsen, M. Nordau. These two forgotten articles by Korolenko show us one of the most important directions in the ideological struggle between the writer and the journal Russkoe bogatstvo in 1904. According to other print sources, this direction is not so obvious, which is why these articles, introduced into scholarly circulation, acquire particular significance.

The publication analyzes one of the most informative and interesting documents of personal origin which are stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and which provide researchers with numerous data on life, daily routine, and public attitudes of citizens of Soviet Russia during the NEP period. This is a letter from V. Krylov, a cadet of the 1st Soviet Military School of the Red Army named after VTSIK, sent to the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in October 1921, describing a non-trivial incident he witnessed in the Kremlin. In his message, Krylov not only described in detail what took place before his eyes, but also gave it his own assessment and called for his addressees to react immediately to the incident. The cadet’s letter contains valuable information on the attitude of Soviet citizens to the food supply system in the RSFSR and their reaction to the violation of declarations of social justice by certain representatives of the Bolshevik elite. At the same time, Krylov’s message is a vivid example of the verbalization of naive idealism and boundless trust in the Bolshevik leaders, ardent faith in the victory of communism and sincere hope for the speedy construction of a just social order, quite common in Soviet society in the early 1920s. Thus, this document allows a detailed study of the mentality, moods and behavioral practices of early Soviet society. V. Krylov’s letter, with a commentary, is published here for the first time.

The paper presents a brief overview of three conferences organized by the Department of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the RAS, St. Petersburg, in 2021–2023, Maclay Readings 2021 and 2022 and a panel on ethnobotany at the Radlov Readings 2023. Fieldwork in the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania is the main focus of our Department. However, since Covid restrictions reduced our possibilities for travel during that period, ethnobotany, another topic traditional for our studies, was chosen as the main theme of the conference. Also, a number of papers dealt with the history, art, traditional and modern culture of the South of Asia and Oceania, as well as Austronesian and Austroasiatic languages.