Image of enemy in English and Russian Crimean War poetry

The article deals with the comparative study of the image of the enemy in the Russian and English poetic texts devoted to the events of the Crimean War. The military-patriotic mass poetry published during the Crimean campaign was chosen as the research material. The English part of the empirical corpus includes poems by E. Jones, M. Tupper, G. Stokes, A. Meek, J. Massey, etc. The Russian part incorporates texts from collections by P. Tatarinov, M. Vladimirova, A. Kononov, G. Fedorov, etc. It is revealed that the image of the enemy in poetry was first of all determined by the nature of the war for Russia and England, respectively. Both Russian and English military-patriotic poetry was aimed at maintaining the morale of the army and the people, glorifying the motherland, soldiers, and weapons. The confidence in victory, and the idea of superiority over enemies make the texts similar. It is observed that in the Russian poems under analysis the enemies are described by epithets with negative connotation. In the English poems, the image of the enemy (i.e. Russia) is revealed as a terrifying animal, in numerical superiority. It is pointed out that enemy Russia is associated in the English poetry of this period with the tyranny and barbarism of Nicholas I.