The article deals with the methods of creating female images in historical and literary works of N. Karamzin, connected with the theme of free Novgorod, and B. Akunin in interpretation of the theme of Novgorod’s loss of liberty in the 15th century, and conclusions are drawn about the specifics of the historical and literary approach to this topic in the writings of writers. Parallels are drawn between the sentimentalist and postmodern principles of depicting history, the specific character of the transformation of the literary tradition in contemporary Russian prose.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of fatherhood in F. Dostoevsky’s novel «Тhe Brothers Karamazov». A comparison is made of two types of paternity: biological (Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov) and spiritual (elder Zosima). It is argued that every action of the «fathers», as well as inaction has moral consequences. Discussed is the phenomenon of patricide as a result of the emanations of the paternal evil will of the father Karamazov, which is opposed to the good will of the elder Zosima, tearing vicious «Karamazov’s» circle. The artistic world of Dostoevsky gives us the Christian idea of the concept of paternal responsibility, and an example of the victory of the spirit over the flesh.

The article is devoted to the problem of time in contemporary literature. It studies the models of interpretation of time as a phenomenon on the example of the novels “Laurus” by E. Vodolazkin and “Miusskaya Square” by M. Golubkov. These works demonstrate a convergence in the interpretation of this problem: time as an illusion, simultaneous existence of past, present and future, the combination of linear and non-linear narrative models. But the understanding of the substance of time phenomenon in these novels is deeply different: in “Laurus”, the concept of time is guided by the religious and moral dominant, time is understood as a tool of moral development. In “Miusskaya Square”, the phenomenon of time has a value in and of itself, and one of the key concepts of the novel is the concept of “native time”. It is proved that the problem of time plays very important role in contemporary literary works that continue the modernist tradition.

Publications of Karamzin of 1802-1803 are examined from the point of view of the tasks of literature in a new era for Russia. Orientation towards benevolent criticism is interpreted as a way of promoting the creative abilities of the author, who is called up to serve the good of the fatherland. The article poses the problem: was art an inherently valuable phenomenon for Karamzin, or was it always a way to achieve the external goals (Europeanization of Russian culture, the oblivion of sad reality, breeding virtue and patriotism). The paradox of the combination of creative activity with the definition of life as a dream is overlaid by Karamzin’s conviction that the realization of all the spiritual faculties of a man is a way to immortality.

It is shown in the article, that the relationships between the “dream” and the “vanity” in the Russian sentimental poetry are reflecting the evolution of its bonds with the enlightenment ideology. Having given the civilization, the negative signs of the “dream” and the “vanity” sentimentalism had later expanded them to the world as the whole, including nature and love. But having identified the poetical “dream” as the key to nature’s perception, the sentimentalism had transformed “dream” in the source of the civilization and the opposite of the “vanity”.

The article explores the evolution of Richard Wright’s worldview and his creative manner during the period of his ideological shift from Communism to existentialism, prompted by his contacts with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, their work and philosophical views. The author reveals the peculiar features of the genesis of existentialism in African-American literature, emerging from the “protest novel”; in this connection, R. Wright’s novel “Native Son” (1940) has been analysed as the work transitional from his social prose to the philosophical existential prose of 1940-1950s. Special attention has been given to the creative history of R. Wright’s novel “The Outsider” (1953) with a focus on its interconnections with “L’Ėtranger” by A. Camus.

In the article, the author makes the assumption that the language of the public service reflects the level of speech culture of modern society, and in this connection appears the necessity of studying communicative competence of civil servants. On the material of the official correspondence of the representatives of the administration of the Vladimir region, the most frequent mistakes have been identified, classified and analyzed. Also, the issue of the ethical-communicative competence of civil servants was raised. As proposals for improvement of the ethical-communicative situation in the public administration, the author suggests to actively implement additional professional qualification programs and professional training aimed at the study of the norms of the modern Russian literary language, competent use of language means, studying communication ethics and formal business protocol.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ways of linguistic realization of positive emotions, that actualize in the modern media discourse. It discusses the relationship of emotion and evaluation, makes a distinction between them considering the factor of expressiveness of the manifestation of an emotional state. The article also examines the role of the author-publicist language personality and his lingvocreativity which allows explicating the positive emotions wit expressive nominations. The author identifies the means of expression and ways of verbalization of emotions with a high degree of expressiveness and positive emotional impact.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ways of subjective modality explication in glossy magazines’ advertising texts. We focus our attention on realization of modality on the different levels of the Russian language: lexical, derivational, morphological and syntactic. In spite of the limited scope of advertising text and its specific purpose, this research demonstrates the multidimensionality and a wide range of the ways of expressing modality in this type of media text. We observe two modal dominants - phatic (establishing the contact) and emotional-evaluative modalities.

The article considers the peculiarities of word-formation neologisms with expressive-evaluative semantics. Material for the analysis is represented by Nizhny Novgorod regional press. The authors attempt to systematize the marked affixes that are involved in creating the evaluative meaning. The main means of expressing the meaning of evaluation are pointed out: semantic characteristic of the producing bases and affixes, unusual ways of word formation. New formations that negatively characterize social life, socially official persons, political movements, parties, etc. are analyzed. The article used the derivational and structural-semantic analyses of new formations. It is concluded that the evaluative meaning of many of neologisms connected with the expressiveness of text.

This article is devoted to the review of the syntactic features of S. Yesenin’s prose work “Bobyl and Druzhok”. The author analyzes the narrative from the point of view of the content and structure of the sentences and identifies and traces the parallels of the story with the works of Russian folklore. On the basis of comparison, the author proves the structural similarity of the work under consideration to the traditions of building Russian folk tales.

The article summarizes the main directions of the doctrine of one-part sentences. The most complex formal and categorical organization is characteristic of the verbal single-composite sentences, and among them, the special position is occupied by infinitive ones. An independent infinitive contains a potential relation towards a person that can be realized by a dative. The infinitive occupies a special position in impersonal infinitive sentences; they have a paradigm of forms of time due to link verb, and the modal meaning of the impossibility of action in the forms of negative pronouns and negative adverbs: не с кем, некому, не у кого; негде, некуда, некогда.

The article reveals a number of new phenomena of the Russian salutation and the main tendency of its development in the last ten years. It focuses on the penetration process of the stylistically reduced versions of salutation into the publicist and the official-business functional styles. The author comes to the conclusion that the speaker in speech communication should choose the form of salutation from the position of communicative responsibility.