The paper is devoted to the research of the life and work of “small writers” on the basis of biographical method, which is known to be classical one and founded on the principle of “the unity of biography and creativity”. Despite the fact that the inability to study creative works in isolation from the philological interest in the personality of the writer was pointed out by G. Hegel and V. Belinsky, modern literature ignores the valuable discoveries of the 19th century. In European literature, the main provisions of the Hegel’s “Aesthetics” were developed and first used by Ch.-Aug. Sainte-Beuve, the French critic and writer. In Russia, the importance of this method was proved by I. Aksakov while writing a monograph about F. Tutchev, by P. Annenkov - about A. Pushkin, by V. Shenrock - about N. Gogol, by N. Gusev and L. Opulskaya-Gromova - about L. Tolstoy. In the article, the author has outlined the main stages of thorough research of N. Tolstoy’s biography and literary works. The author has presented the findings concerning the undeserved lack of scientific interest to the personality of Leo Tolstoy’s elder brother.

The paper is devoted to description of England, peculiarities of life and everyday way of life of Englishmen, their national character in N. Karamzin’s “Letters of a Russian traveller”. First of all the traveller pays attention to damp and gloomy English climate and connects national psychological features of Englishmen, in particular, their susceptibility to spleen and melancholy with climate and everyday food of Englishmen. In “Letters of a Russian traveller”, we can trace the constant aspiration to compare English life with Russian or French one, in particular, London with Paris. Much attention in “Letters” is paid to English literature. It is typical that Karamzin sees England and Englishmen with the eyes of an educated European and it in many respects determines his observations and impressions, conclusions and generalizations.

On the basis of the analysis of M. Lermontov’s «Sail» the conclusion about features of the poet’s art system and worldview is drawn. The spiritual reality in the poet’s representation is the embodiment of all internal forces of the personality supported by spiritual and cultural experience. Using the principles of icon-painting art in the poem, the poet creates an artistic image in which physical and spiritual are indissolubly merged. The poem’s structure and contents opens a question of life’s meaning the purpose of which is defined in connection with God.

Historical novel of the early 19th century, approaching the historiography, had accumulated in its narrative structure, the specificity of a new artistic models of historicism. In different versions, appealing to document and documentary, it verified the border of new epistemes, being the subject and the object of historicizing reflection; belonged to the era of its creation and the epoch it rebuilt. History and document do not only co-exist, they are mutually permeable, flo

The paper discusses the creative biography of I. Kupchinskiy, Kursk forgotten writer late 19th - early 20th centuries. On the example of I. Kupchinskiy’s works, the combination of different genres in his work (drama, short stories, essay) is shown and the artistic influence of the «natural school», traditions of A. Ostrovsky’s drama are analyzed. The article is the first study in this direction.

The article deals with the perception of the «Slavic question» by the Russian thinkers-Slavophiles, as well as by scientists-Slavists (I. Sreznevsky, O. Bodyansky) and by some cultural figures (M. Pogodin, N. Shcherbina, etc.) who joined them in terms of way of thinking and occupation. Types of their interaction in a field of Russian-Slavic interrelations are mentioned (creation of Slavic charitable committees, cooperation in the Society of fans of the Russian literature, in periodic publications of Slavophiles). The author of article, basing on the evidence of correspondence and materials of periodicals, tries to define what constituted the content of the concept «Slavophilism». The main conclusion of this article is that in the middle and the late 19th century the Russian thinkers-Slavophiles, and also scientists and public figures who shared their world view, have given a new essential impulse to studying of culture and history of foreign Slavs.

The article presents possible source of M. Lermontov’s picture (1829) made by nut ink on the notebook with poerms presented to the teacher A. Solonitsky. The M. Lermontov’s lyre represents a variation of standard decor drawing on the paperback books of the first third of the 19th century. Decorations of two magazines are specified as possible sources for drawing -«Moscow bulletin» and «Contestant of education and charity».

In the article, one of options of classification of images of children in A. Averchenko’s stories is considered. Features of educational styles as well as children’s behavior and outlook become the basis for allocation of several groups of images. The paper presents a number of methods, characteristic of A. Averchenko’s prose, - in particular, an exaggeration of the reality seen by child’s eyes. Comparison of children and adult images is carried out, semantic parallels with texts of works of other authors are established. The conclusion is made that there is a need of detailed research of structure of children’s images in A. Averchenko’s prose.

The research proposes an attempt to classify the thematic group «Clothes» basing on the analyses of 95 newest units - compound nominations taken from more than 1500 contexts presented in mass media, internet, lexical-grammatical sources. The classification is based on the relative principle which made it possible to select three compound nominations groups related to the thematic group «Clothes». Special attention in this research is paid to the combination of intra and extra linguistic features of the analyzed units functioning in modern Russian discursive practices of 21st century.

The paper identifies and analyses characteristics of phono-semantic oppositions within neologisms found in the poetry of Igor Severyanin. Furthermore, it examines lexical semantic units in these neologisms. The article establishes an unprecedented connection between the three aspects of word’s meaning in the researched pairs antonyms: denotative, connotative and phono-semantic. The researched material does not contradict the common structure of phono-semantic relations. In the majority of examples given by the author, phono-semantic components of pairs of antonyms support their conceptual aspects.

The article describes a fragment of the system of proper names in the poems of one of the most famous Russian poets of the 20th century - S. Yesenin. The cycle “Persian motifs” shows the role of oriental onyms used by the writer to reproduce the brightness of the East that occupied an important place in the last years of the poet’s life. The paper dwells on such anthroponyms as names of lyrical characters, place names and geographical names.

This paper is devoted to the actual in modern linguistics topic related to the study of intersections area of oppositional presentation of the concepts “good and evil”, which are the dominants of the Russian culture. On the material of A. Akhmatova’s poems, the author reveals the contents of this diffuse zone, attempts to systematize its features and characteristics. The area of intersection is considered as a single entity, which is verbally actualized primarily in the artistic environment, synthesizing the cultural-historical, philosophical, and religious layers of the concept.

The article explores the phenomenon of «Music», verbalized in the story by L. Tolstoy «The Kreutzer Sonata», it considers the specifics of the phenomenon «Music» as a subject in L. Tolstoy’s linguistic picture of the world. It determines its cognitive-semantic contents, analyses its cognitive peculiarities, conceptual features on the basis of analysis of its elements. It is found that the structure of the «Music» phenomenon as a subject is formed by a discrete architectonic, that includes 14 basic predicates that have specific features of structural periphery and are differentiated by various sets of cognitive and epistemological components. The cognitive basis of music as the active essence is the discretization of emotional states, spirituality, intellectual and moral-ethical importance, communication, physiological component.

The article defines and justifies the status of semantic-grammatical category of limit, which formal operator is самый. The word самый transferred into the system of particles from the class of pronouns as a result of grammatization. It lost its demonstrative meaning, but preserved forms of gender, number, case. In these forms, it agrees with nouns that refer to time, space, process. This is how the forms of limit are formed. The semantics of limit varies with the presence of prepositions, it can be emphasized as a part of a statement.

This article describes two types of text: prospection and retrospection. The prosaic texts of I. Bunin served as a practical material. Objective from author’s perspective and subjective from reader’s one, retrospection / prospection are caused by composition, the author’s intention and the reader’s perception of a text. Concepts retrospection / prospection are closely linked to the space-time continuum of the work. The analysis proved the linear fragmentation of the text, which directly serves the connection of all the temporal aspects.

In the article one of aspects of Maximus the Greek’s book corrections on the example of Psalms 1552 is considered. The paper deals with verbs in the form of past tense, as well as lexical options. Presented discrepancies are a valuable material for the study of complex processes in the development of the literary language in the period from 16th to 18th century. The author uses new language material that confirmed Maximus the Greek’s contribution as a translator and a corrector to process of working out the stylistic standards of the Russian literary language.

The article investigates grammatical forms used in the lists of “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh” which were written at different times in the 15th and 16th centuries. Lexical-morphological variant readings might have appeared as a result of editing. Morphological differences appear in nouns and verb forms more frequently. Authors of the texts tried to avoid repetition of phrases and cognate words, which leads to the diversity of vocabulary of the work. Grammatical variants of nouns show the formation of declination types and loss of the dual grammatical number. Variants of verb and participle forms, substitution of one kind of forms by others show the appearance of such grammatical category as aspect in the language of writers.

In the article, the author gives the theoretical and practical bases of features of evolution of business communication in modern political and administrative media communication from the point of view of several scientific disciplines, and presents the analysis of scientific research on this subject. The author considers that in describing modern development of political and administrative communication in Internet, it is possible to speak about an active tendency of mediatization, that is about loss or weakening of the official beginning of the business texts and intensification of media quality connected with influence of new computer and network technologies and transition of political and administrative communication into information media space.

The article is devoted to the study of syntagmatic nomination possibilities of a professional worker. The research is based on an analysis of the relationship of associations in the minds of Russian speakers (according to the directed association experiment) and the compatibility of the nominations of persons by profession, position, rank, and occupation with adjectives in lexicographical sources, as well as the texts of print and audio media of the 21st century. The author analyzed the matches of associative reactions of native speakers, that is, units of the mental sphere, with language implementations, in particular, the discursive of lexicographic fixation.