The poetics of intercultural interaction of Russian and Chinese thematic prose through the prism of the image of travel

Abstract

The article is devoted to the poetics of intercultural interaction in Russian and Chinese thematic prose through the prism of the image of the journey as a liminal chronotope that generates the recoding of meanings and the internal transformation of the experiential subject; the aim of the study is to identify models for the conceptualization of space, time, and the purpose of the journey, a typology of images of the Other and the semantics of landscape as a bearer of cultural codes, as well as to describe the mechanisms for constructing knowledge about a foreign culture in the literary narrative. The empirical base is a corpus of prose texts of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries from both literatures - from travelogues and travel sketches to novels and novellas in which the journey functions as a plot-forming motif; methodologically, the study draws on hermeneutic, comparative, structural-semiotic (Y.M. Lotman's semiosphere), discursive, and phenomenological approaches. The results include a systematization of chronotopic patterns: in Russian prose China is metaphysically symbolized as a space of trial with a sense of the cyclicality or eschatology of time and the dominance of a spiritual existential goal; in Chinese prose Russia is represented as a sociohistorically organized territory with a linear temporal perspective and the pragmatic goal of assimilating experience. An ambivalent triad of archetypes of the Other (sage/guardian - barbarian/chaos - pragmatist/builder) and its mirror projections has been identified, which function to simplify alterity and protect identity but hinder genuine dialogue. It is shown that the landscape in Russian texts is psychologized and carries a metaphysical load, whereas in Chinese texts it serves as an indicator of civilizational status and of the historical-social readability of space. The discussion underscores the ideological character of the travel narrative and its role as an instrument of self-knowledge of the own through the foreign ; a comprehensive typology of the chronotope, archetypes, and landscape semantics is proposed that refines the mechanisms of intercultural hermeneutics. The conclusion establishes two largely opposing cognitive-aesthetic models of engaging with the foreign - the metaphysical - existential (Russian) and the historical-pragmatic (Chinese) - with practical significance for the teaching of world literature and intercultural communication; the limitations of the corpus and the prospects for quantitative and reception-oriented studies are outlined.