PROBLEMATIC AND POETICAL FEATURES OF STING’S DEBUT ALBUM “THE DREAM OF THE BLUE TURTLES” (1985)

Due to the need to establish the qualitatively new paradigm of literary studies, which involves innovative research methods, in particular comparative and intermedial, it is expedient to look at the song text as a concise result of the interaction between formal and substantial elements of a literary work, concepts of related art types and various sciences: sociology, religious studies, philosophy, history etc.The purpose of this article was the analysis of Sting's texts included in his debut solo album "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" (1985) to elucidate the specific functions of substantial and formal elements, their role in emphasizing the compositional, genre, and problematic components in a separate work and in the formation of a special song genre, open to further interpretations, both scientific and artistic.Having applied the historical-and-typological, comparative and juxtapositive methods of analyzing artistic texts, the author of the article traced the development of thematic and problematic dimensions of Sting's songs included into "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" as a reflection of changes in social, political realities and artistic systems in British culture at the end of the 20 th century.In turn, these research methods allowed the researcher to fully grasp the formal factors of the early Sting's song lyrics, which are the principles of creating the image of the speaker ("Shadows in the Rain," "Consider Me Gone," "Moon over Bourbon Street," "Fortress around Your Heart"); the interplay of epic, lyrical, and dramatic genre concepts with language-style characteristics, which give rise to a historically conditioned chronotopos in "Russians," "Children's Crusade," "We Work the Black Seam"; the role of prosody factors and musical derangement in creating the positive-vibe intonation of "Love Is the Seventh Wave."Overall, it was affirmed that the principle of historicism, prominent to the entire Sting's album, apart from the a priori urgency of expression, provides an eloquent philosophical nature of his work.