FUNCTIONS OF REMINISENCES IN CHRISTMAS STORIES OF MODERN RUSSIAN WRITERS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WORKS OF Yu. BUIDA AND D. BYKOV)

The Little Match Girl by H.Ch. Andersen is a fairy tale that tells a tragic story about a child's death at Christmas night. Famous Russian authors Yu. Buida and D. Bykov have written stories with the same names (The Little Match Girl and The Little Match Girl Gives a Light). The authors deliberately used these names to show the relation with the famous work. In both stories, the action is set within the timeline defined by the canons of religious calendarial prose. There are miracles in the stories; the Christmas characters are archetypes, as they are kind, merciful and compassionate. The stories written by the contemporary authors are examples of a kind of a palimpsest. They show the socio-historical collisions and moral problems of the post-Soviet time. The article uses the comparative method which allows us to consider the types of characters, to find literary traditions and innovations in the prose of the writers. It is important to take an intertextual approach during (when) examining the stories. It helps identify and analyze how certain motifs and images relate in the 19th century literature and fiction texts of modern writers. This approach reveals the deep connection between the works and the texts of world and Russian literary classics.

Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery

It is hard to overestimate the extent to which anti-Catholicism structured the Atlantic world. As much as Catholicism itself was a transatlantic force (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History article “Catholicism” by Allyson M. Poska), the counter-response to Catholicism had a pervasive influence, especially in the Protestant-dominated North Atlantic (see “Protestantism” by Carla Gardina Pastana). It was, as Chris Beneke and Christopher Grenda have observed, “nimble and ubiquitous” (The First Prejudice, p. 15). The past decade has witnessed significant growth in the scholarship on anti-Catholicism. The most important overall advancement is our growing understanding that anti-Catholicism was more than just a knee-jerk prejudice. It was a complex, varied, and protean phenomenon that warrants close analysis. To a great degree, the growing sophistication of the historiography on anti-Catholicism across the Atlantic basin builds on the work of historians of early modern England and Britain, who have been carefully documenting and analyzing the phenomenon since the 1970s. Because this work is relatively narrow in its geographic scope—often limited to a particular county or region, individual, group, or theme—it is not covered here; but this historiography has been hugely important in providing a foundation for the works that are represented. The bibliography covers scholarship on anti-Catholicism from the 17th through the 20th centuries with a necessary focus on the North Atlantic world. It pays special attention to the British context not only because the literature is most developed for that region but also because it was the British who were most responsible for transferring anti-Catholic ideas, identities, institutions, and policies across the ocean. That said, historical examination of anti-Catholicism in the Dutch world is growing and is thus represented here as well. Overall, the works were selected either for their influence on studies of anti-Catholicism in the Atlantic world in various times and places, or because they adopt a wide geographical lens and deal directly with the Atlantic dimensions of anti-Catholicism. Indeed, one of the trends in the historiography is a shift from early modern and nation-centric studies to transnational investigations that include the 19th and 20th centuries (scholarship on the 18th century, while growing, still lags somewhat behind the early modern and 19th-century literature.) Other trends include efforts to distinguish anti-Catholicism from its closely related corollary, anti-Popery, and to explore the relationship between them; growing calls for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of anti-Catholicism; analysis of cross-fertilization of various forms of anti-Catholicism evident in the Atlantic world; and a commitment to studying how those targeted by anti-Catholicism navigated the systemic oppression it created.

Topic Modeling and Analysis: Comparing the Most Common Topics in 19th-Century Novels Written by Female Writers

Women authors from the 19th-century have had a profound impact on the literary world due to their critical approach to and inclusion of various so-cial phenomena within their work, such as women's rights, sexuality, and human psychology. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion by quantifying thematic similarities in eight select novels by various female authors of the 19th-century. These novels were chosen due to their contribution to literature and their popularity, common use in college courses around the world, and the prominence of the female authors. This study included utilizing a programming environment known as R Studio to perform a topic model. Performing a topic model allowed for the discernment of ten main themes or topics that can be generally seen across all eight selected novels, and by extension, 19th-century literature by female authors. The research found initial evidence to sup-port the general understanding of said literature as an endeavor of the themes of social critique and in-dividual consciousness; however, the results were not absolute in conclusion because of the limited size of the corpus. A larger corpus of documents (novels) is necessary to reach further conclusions.

Apsīšu Jēkabs un Rūdolfs Blaumanis: salīdzināmie aspekti

The topic of the paper reflects an interest in potential sources of Rūdolfs Blaumanis’s literary output. Blaumanis himself did confirm that he considered Apsīšu Jēkabs among the most important Latvian writers of the 19th century. Both authors focused their attention on the historical period later labelled the age of transition. In this context, several important aspects are discussed. The paper pays attention to the infringement of moral laws in society and the reflection of this trend in literary texts. An important topic is the stratification of society, including the relations among the nobility, peasants, and servants, and their changing patterns. The role of money, including the rise of calculated marriages, is also an object of discussion, as well as the issues of upbringing in families and schools. In this paper, aesthetic parallels are discussed within the context of the impact of popular literature on both writers. Both of them often used exaggerated situations in order to raise the appeal of their texts to their respective audiences. The principles of the creation of comic effects are also scrutinised. One of the issues discussed in the paper is that of intercultural relations. Whereas Apsīšu Jēkabs points toward the juxtaposition of Latvian and Baltic German literary cultures, Blaumanis is much more open to their coexistence and extracts positive aspects out of the position among different cultures as reflected in the wide range of his literary sources. However, it is important to point to the impact of Latvian 19th-century literature on the development of Blaumanis’s ideas and his creative potential.

Madame de Staël ou le plaidoyer pour une vie seconde : le théâtre

"Madame de Staël or the Necessity of a Second Life: The Theatre. Our contribution proposes an incursion into literary history at the time of the First Wave of French Romanticism. The subject of the investigation is Madame de Staël’s experimental theatre and the dramatic seasons that she organized between 1804 and 1811 in Coppet and Geneva. Our conclusions are twofold: on the aesthetic side, Coppet’s dramatic representations had the role of changing the aesthetic and literary canons of the early 19th century; on the historical side, the Coppet Group is one of the first romantic cenacles whose resounding literary activity was the theatre. Keywords: Madame de Staël, Coppet, Geneva, experimental theatre, French Romanticism, aesthetic and literary canons, 19th century literature, romantic theatre."

Kształcenie postaw wobec zwierząt w XIX-wiecznej literaturze dla dzieci i młodzieży

Despite the continued tendency of 19th century literature to use traditional fables with animal characters to reveal human virtues and vices, there rapidly grew up a movement of literature for young people whose only aim was to cultivate moral attitudes towards animals. By means of various literary genres, the younger generation was educated to achieve a sensitivity towards the pain and suffering of animals. Learning about the consequences of cruelty, young readers were taught to avoid maltreating animals. Literature prompted compassion in the young readers. Not only were particular examples condemned – of cruelty, beating, abuse – but the moral consequences of these violations were demonstrated. Following Immanuel Kant, it was assumed that harming animals weakens our moral sensitivity, which leads to a person becoming cruel not only towards animals but towards people as well.