MEANINGFUL CONTENT OF THE CONCEPT <i>COCOON</i> IN V. V. NABOKOV'S STORIES "BENEFICENCE" AND "CHRISTMAS"
The article analyses the meaningful content of the concept COCOON represented in V. V. Nabokov's stories “Christmas” and “Beneficence” by a semantic row of homogeneous objects: box, coffin, cocoon of a butterfly, furniture covers, matchbox, clay bar wrapped in cloth, chestnuts. The research focuses on studying the meaningful content of the analysed concept. The objective is to trace how the meaning of cocoon related images is realized in the context of the cycle “The Return of Chorb”, in particular, to reveal the nature of thematic relation between the two stories and between the text and intertext of one of the stories. It is shown that figurative and thematic integrity of the stories is achieved by variations of the cocoon motive.