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| 1 | Introduction. The article deals with spatial images of the German resort towns Bad-Ems and Baden-Baden in the travel notes by M. Ye. Saltykov-Shchedrin “Za rubezhom”. This issue is still practically unresearched in literature studies and highly actual for imagology. Aim and objectives. The aim of the paper is detecting motives used by the writer for representing the towns in his work. Material and methods. The methods of the research are comparative and descriptive analysis, cultural-historical and semiotic methods. Results. The author of the research detects such characteristics of the literary space marked with Germanness as order, achronism, corruption and theatricalism of the life within the analysed loci. The special attention is paid to the core motif of the inner unfreedom by which the image of Germany unique for all kinds of German space is formed in the work. It’s also settled that the cross-cutting urbanistic image is according to the typology by V. N. Toporov the image of the ‘whore’-city influencing the images of the German resort towns and marking transformation of the erotic element in the sphere of goods/money relationships. Thus the text of the ‘fallen’ city imbued with Christian references shows throw the trivial reality of the philistine Germany in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work and is as an intertextual base one of connecting links between images of the German resort towns and the capital Berlin. In addition the writer represents not only anthropic but also natural loci of mountain spaces forming a dimensional and simultaneously a spiritual opposition to the valley-space of the human existence earthbound in all senses. Conclusion. The results expand literary conceptualization about space images in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s works and connect German images created by the writer with the common tradition of representing Germany and Germans in the Russian literature of XIX – the early XX centuries. The article can be useful for Russian literature teachers and specialists dealing with literary imagology. Keywords: M. Ye. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Russian literature of the XIX century, Germany, image of Alien, image of resort towns, motif, literary space, locus, satire | 1587 | ||||