Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka

The article examines the evolution of the use of written marks that indicate omissions, pauses, and speech interruptions in Russian literature from the 18^th to the early 19^th century. The authors argue that, through the example of the ellipsis and competing punctuation marks, it is possible to see how the punctuation usage evolved throughout the 18^th century and how the process of normalization in the field of punctuation proceeded in the 19^th century. The currently accepted viewpoint is that there was no unified norm in the Russian language after Peter the Great’s time, and the usage was of a hybrid nature. On one hand, there was a diminishing influence of early printed Slavic books, while on the other hand, the role of translated literature was increasing. The nature and intensity of the interaction between these two traditions depended on a given system of language. For example, the hybrid nature of punctuation usage persisted until the 19^th century. During this period, punctuation marks can be grouped according to their degree of codification. Non-codified marks were those that were yet to be recorded in normative manuals but already occurred in literary texts from the first quarter of the 18^th century. They were codified much later, when they had become commonly used in the literary language. In this regard, it would be worthwhile and linguistically important to clarify the rules for using non-codified punctuation marks within a certain time period and determine the extent to which these rules depended on existing writing traditions. The most illustrative in this respect is the ellipsis: its presence in literary production can be traced to as early as the 1720s, although it was only codified in grammar in 1831.

Substantivization is one of the most common types of transposition, i.e. the using of a word in a strange syntactic role not peculiar to it. The article analyzes 5 subtypes of substantivization in modern Russian. They are illustrated by examples from Russian fiction, from A. Blok and I. Bunin to V. Tokareva and N. Kolyada. It is shown that all these cases are motivated by certain mechanisms of inner speech, among which are: a) conversion, b) compression, c) univerbation, d) ellipsis, e) citation. Three main tools (formal means) of substantivization have been identified. These are: unfilled valency of the verb; compatibility with a preposition; the possibility of definition by an adjective or a pronoun. For the first time, the psycholinguistic aspect of substantivization is discussed. The stylistic role of some subtypes of substantivized word (their expressive coloring) is noted.

The article examines the activities of Pyotr Petrovich Gnedich (1855–1925) as a translator and popularizer of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the Russian theater stage. Two translations of Hamlet, completed with a gap of more than twenty years, mark in Gnedich’s life the beginning and completion of his active work to ‘turn’ the Russian theater towards Shakespeare. Based on the material of pre-revolutionary periodicals and other publications at the turn of the 19^th–20^th centuries, the authors recreate the image of Russian Shakespearean literature in Gnedich’s translations and productions, turning primarily to Hamlet. Gnedich’s translation of Hamlet, which after its publication in 1891 competed with the translations of its predecessors, was not only more accurate, but also served as the basis for two ‘official’ productions in the imperial theaters (Maly in Moscow, Alexandrinsky in St. Petersburg), which set a new trend to the ensemble and integral artistic solution of this play. The extensive researched material of theatrical criticism allows us to draw a conclusion about the important historical and cultural significance of Gnedich’s work on Hamlet – not only as a translator, but also as the author of the idea of an artistic solution, as a director and researcher of the text in interaction with the leading actors of the era of A.I. Yuzhin and V.P. Dalmatov. In the second translation of Hamlet, which did not receive public recognition largely due to its publication in the revolutionary year of 1917, Gnedich’s priority is not scenic quality, but figurative and phonetic accuracy in combination with the principles of equilinearity and equirhythmicity.

The article offers an attempt of comparative analysis of the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and N.S. Leskov from the point of view of “anecdotism” as a means of plot construction and destruction of conventional methods of typification. The material used includes reviews of contemporaries, aesthetic declarations of Leskov and Saltykov, as well as early Leskovʼs journalism. Even Leskovʼs contemporaries characterized him as an “anecdotist writer”, implying his inability to analyze large-scale historical trends and to develop a coherent ethical assessment of phenomena and characters. Similarly, Saltykov-Shchedrinʼs critics from among the radical Sixties youth reproached the writer with “innocent humor”, masking the lack of ideas and superficiality of social analysis. However, as early as the late 1850s, some critics believed that the plots of Shchedrinʼs essays were too similar to anecdotes. The article shows that by refusing a completed plot with clearly defined ideological accents, both authors sought to overcome the narrative clichés of their time.

The article is devoted to the study of the transformation and development of eternal images in the late works of I.S. Turgenev (1860–1870s). The author comes to the conclusion about the gradual complication of the characters and plots in late novels and novels, and the opposition of new female types to the male types of Hamlet, Faust and Don Quixote.