Keyword: «comparative literary studies»

The author analyses the emergence and development of imagology in Russia as a branch of comparative literary studies investigating national images, specific features of reception of the other/alien in the system of culture. Special attention is paid to the research conducted in the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The leader of these studies was Prof. V. B. Zemskov, whose conception of imagology is considered in the paper, including the main goals of this discipline, its inventory, the notions of stereotype, image, and also the mechanisms and historical aspects of imagological reception and representation.