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The article deals with the short story by the English writer Thomas Hardy An Imaginative Woman (1894), which has not been translated into Russian. The author of the article analyzes this work from the point of view of genre features and classifies it as a piece of photoekphrastic prose. The argument in favor of this categorization is photographic ekphrasis, penetrating into such poetological levels of the story as plot-and-composition, character-related, spatiotemporal, narrative, motive-thematic. The perception of photography had a particular impact on the poetics of ekphrasis in the works of the Victorian era: it was not instantaneously perceived as a new and independent art form. Photo ekphrasis viewed through the prism of the Victorian times allows assuming its genre-forming function. It is not surprising that the mysticism of the photographic is reflected in photoekphrastic prose. According to the plot of the story, a photograph of a poet has an inexplicable impact on Ella Marchmill: looking at the photograph, she falls in love with him and commits adultery with him in her imagination and fantasies. After the suicide of the poet, whom she never met in reality, Ella dies. Having accidentally found the photograph in his house, the husband discovers some similarity between the child and the photographic portrait and kicks the child out of the house. The genre of Victorian short story, 'open' and developing, turned out to be the most organic form for photoekphrastic experiments. Thus, the functionality of photo ekphrasis in a short story is very versatile: it creates external and internal eventfulness in the story; reveals the psychology of the characters; serves as an impetus for expanding the historical and cultural context of the Victorian era; acts as a link between two worlds – the real and the ideal, built with the help of the imaginary; embodies the motives of 'meeting' and 'recognizing', as well as the theme of death and identity (personal, social) of the characters. The participation of photo ekphrasis in the organization of all levels of the artistic system of the story allows us to classify it as the genre ofphotoekphrastic short story.

This article is devoted to the study of the peculiar genre features of Afterimage (2000), a novel by the English-born Canadian writer Helen Humphreys. The author of the article introduces the definition of the concept of photographic ekphrasis, i.e. a description in the text of a photograph that is the subject of a character's reflection or the result of a collaboration of the photographer and the model. The photographic discourse penetrates the plot-compositional, character, space-time, and narrative levels of the poetics of the novel. Starting with the analysis of the title of the novel, the author of the article concludes about the decisive role of photography in the genre structure of the novel. This makes it possible to introduce the term "photoreconstruction novel" and categorise the novel analysed as belonging to this type. This genre form implies a number of characteristic features: the presence of protophotographic ekphrasis (the existence of a real photographic prototype in culture defined by the reader on the basis of secondary cultural experience (this term is introduced for the first time)); the novel is set in a period remote from the modern times, as a rule between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the main character is a photographer-reconstructor of a myth / mythological image; supported by the motif of theatricalisation ("the character of being staged"). Particular attention is paid to the link of allegorical photographic works of the English Victorian photographer J. M. Cameron and photographic ekphrases in the novel by H. Humphreys. The organic synthesis of two types of art — artistic words and photographic art — forms intermediate connections in the novel, expanding the field of interpretation and implying an active role of the reader. Humphreys' Afterimage based on the genre structure of a photographic ekphrasis fits into the context of the phototextual English-language novel of the late nineteenth — early twenty-first centuries.

The article deals with phototextuality as a poetological category of the modern English novel. An attempt is made to define the term 'phototextuality'. A brief historiography of the issue is presented. The focus is basically on photographic ecphrasis, which we define as a description of a photograph being the subject of the character's reflection or a result of cooperation of the photographer and the model. The article introduces two differentiating terms: protophotonekphrasis, which has a real photoprototype in the culture, and a notional photoekphrasis, created exclusively by the author's imagination. Each of these photoekphrases is an active structure-forming component of both the issues raised and the poetics of the analyzed novels: Master Georgie (1998) by B. Bainbridge, The Photograph (2003) by P. Lively, The Rain Before It Falls (2007) by J. Coe, The Unseen (2011) by K. Webb. We investigate the functionality of photoekphrasis as a structural-semantic unit of literary text at the following levels: plot and composition, narrative, chronotope, system of images-characters. Photoekphrasis, organically fitting into the postmodern themes and subject matter of the novels, brings to the fore the concepts of memory, identity, fact and fiction, death and others as motives-themes and motives-problems. Basing on the analysis performed, we propose a classification of novels depending on the type of photographs presented in them – staged or random (natural): 1) a novel-photoreconstruction and 2) a novel-photoreflection. Photographic ekphrasis as a type of phototextuality can be considered one of the basic narrative strategies in literary practice of the late 20th – early 21st centuries.