The dissertation is devoted to the study of photographic images and their functions in the novel by Jonathan Coe “The Rain Before it Falls.” The paper describes the milestones of Coe’s formation as a writer and the main features of his style. Adhering to the English family novel genre helps to identify the impact of this tradition on the novel in question. Other objects of study include the history of creation of the novel, and the background for the use of visual means. Photographic image is analyzed from the point of ecphrasis theory. It describes the differences of structure, semantics, and functions of the pictural and photographic ecphrasis present in the novel. Understanding the nature and the functions of photographic ecphrasis proves important for delivering a reasoned interpretation of the novel “The Rain Before it Falls.” Investigation of the role of images opens up prospects for further study J.Coe’s creative work. / Диссертация посвящена исследованию функций фотографических изображений в романе Дж. Коу "Пока не выпал дождь". В работе описан творческий путь писателя и особенности его творчества. Прослеживается его связь с традициями английского семейного романа, оказавшая влияние на исследуемое произведение. Рассматривается история создания романа и предпосылки к использованию визуальных образов. Фотография анализируется с позиций теории экфрасиса. Описываются различия структуры, семантики и функций живописного и фотографического экфрасисов, присутствующих в романе. Фотографический экфрасис оказывается функционально важным для понимания романа "Пока не выпал дождь". Исследование роли изображений открывает перспективы для дальнейшего изучения творчества Дж. Коу.

Scholarship on Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe tends to center on eroticism or pastoralism or the interplay of the two in the infusion of Theocritean innocence into the Greek narrative prose tradition of heterosexual love. Although these approaches examine Longus’s careful construction of an eroticized pastoral world, they tend to overlook the reproduction and parenthood that also inform Longus’s pastoralism. This article argues that Longus’s pastoral landscapes, signaled chiefly by the locus amoenus, have a primarily reproductive rather than erotic function. These landscapes introduce parenthood and childcare as themes that, in turn, serve as metaphors for the creative process behind the novel itself. By shifting the focus to the reproductive and parental aspects of Daphnis and Chloe, I will illuminate a hybrid quality to Longus’s pastoralism that has not been fully explored but is a key aspect of his pastoral art.

The thesis consists of detailed commentary on the first 201 lines of Catullus 64, together with an edited text and apparatus criticus. It represents about half a planned commentary on the whole poem, which will also include an introduction. The commentary begins by discussing the poem’s Argonautic opening, its use of allusion to negotiate generic relationships with epic and tragedy, and its exploration of narrative, pictorial and first-person ‘lyric’ modes. As the narrative jumps to Peleus’ wedding, the commentary examines the complicated moral signals about Roman luxury and the golden age sent by the description of the gleaming palace surrounded by abandoned fields. The transition to the description of Ariadne prompts an examination of how this ‘disobedient’ ecphrasis emphasises details that a picture could not literally convey, together with an analysis of the male narrator’s objectifying presentation of a woman in distress. The ecphrasis proper is then disrupted by a ‘flashback’ covering Ariadne’s first encounter with Theseus and his fight with the Minotaur: the commentary explores the ways in which shifting focalisation complicates the reader’s judgement of Theseus’ heroism. Finally, the thesis looks at Ariadne’s speech as an intertextual node, investigating the meanings generated by its relationships with other speeches from both earlier and later in Greek and Roman poetic traditions, and examining how each theme or topos is used in this particular situation both by the alluding poet and by Ariadne herself. More discursive notes introducing the various sections are interspersed with shorter lemmata considering textual, metrical, linguistic and cultural-historical issues as well as literary interpretation. The commentary aims both to open up the possibilities of meaning offered by individual words and phrases, and to advance critical understanding of key aspects of the whole poem, such as its narratorial voice, engagement with visuality and place in literary history.

The dissertation is devoted to the study of ecphrasis in the“Three stories” cycle by G. Flaubert. The theoretical chapter deals with the problem of ecphrasis in literary criticism in the following aspects: the genesis of ecphrasis as a literary device, ecphrasis in ancient literature and rhetoric, new theories of ecphrasis, ecphrasis as a genre, ecphrasis in the context of the narrative approach, types and functions of ecphrasis, ecphrasis in relation to intermediality. Further, the paper reveals and investigates ecphrastic descriptions in each of the stories included in the collection by G. Flaubert, particularly those referring to the well-known paintings by European artists and the bas-relief of the cathedral of Rouen. Much attention is paid to investigating the semantics of these descriptions against the background of Christianity, which is broadly present in the cycle, as well as their relation to imagery, plot development, composition, and the motive structure of the stories. / Данная работа посвящена исследованию экфрасиса в цикле «Три повести» Г. Флобера. В теоретической главе рассматривается проблема исследования экфрасиса в литературоведении в следующих аспектах: генезис экфрасиса, экфрасис в античной литературе и риторике, новейшие теории об экфрасисе, экфрасис как жанр, экфрасис с точки зрения нарративного подхода, функции экфрасиса, виды экфрасиса, экфрасис в историко-литературной перспективе, экфрасис в контексте явления интермедиальности. Во второй главе исследуются экфрастические описания в каждой из новелл, входящих в сборник Г. Флобера, отсылающих, в частности, к известным картинам европейских художников, а также к барельефу Руанского собора.. Большое внимание уделяется взаимосвязи экфрасиса с христианским подтекстом, имеющим большое значение для понимания смысловой структуры цикла, а также с системой образов, сюжетом, композицией, основными мотивами повестей цикла.