Kryukova Olga S.

The article provides an overview of the life and scientific path of Moscow University professor Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin, a literary and theatre critic. Special attention is paid to his activities at Moscow University.

In the study a cultural and historical approach is used, which allows for a critical assessment of the contribution made by N.I. Nadezhdin, including his literary and artistic-critical works. Nadezhdin in his literary and critical articles aimed to establish a hierarchy of literary genres. As a literary critic he initially had quite extremely critical views on contemporary literature, though not always was he objective in assessing his contemporaries' works. As a theater critic, Nadezhdin gave feedback to the Moscow staging of the play "Woe from Wit" in 1831. A series of articles concerning theatre was entitled "The Russian Theatre (Letters to St. Petersburg)" and published in 1833 in "Molva" ('rumor'). Four letters have not been signed, but there are serious arguments in favor of Nadezhdin's authorship. Nadezhdin supposed that the main task of contemporary art was to synthesize classicism and romanticism, and thus subjected the neoclassical and neo-romantic manner of acting to a close and rigorous analysis.

The article deals with a bookplate or ex libris, a special type of fine and decorative applied art. Relying on the categories of art semiotics the authors outline the properties of the genre using such concepts as individuality and human personality. The article analyses the role individuality and personality play in producing the idea of a bookplate, in performing its artistic solution and delivering the information about its owner. Another aspect to be investigated is the influence that verbal arts produce on the composition and design of bookplates, namely the synthesis of the visual and the verbal functioning in accordance with the rules of sign ensembles combining signs from different systems. The principles of interaction between the visual and the verbal in a bookplate are considered using the samples from the library belonging to Irakly Andronikov, a scholar, writer and a master of oral storytelling. The samples of oral storytelling by Andronikov were compared to the generalized principles of featuring bookplates to reveal the common mechanisms underlying these materials. The description and attribution of the bookplates reflect the milestones of Andronikov's biography, as well as plots and heroes from the fiction by of Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.