Plant Image in Literary Texts as an Object of Literary Analysis: A Review of Russian Scholarship (2000-2020s)

This paper provides a comprehensive review of Russian academic works (2000–2025) on the literary representation of plants in world literature. Drawing on dissertations, monographs, encyclopedias, and scholarly articles, the study offers the first systematic overview of research examining botanical imagery with both fixed and non-fixed semantic functions. The analysis demonstrates that, since early Romanticism, plant imagery has acquired a pronounced imaginative dimension. Despite the growing prominence of polysemous botanical motifs from the 19th century onward, archetypal plant symbols persist even in contemporary texts. Key thematic clusters identified include: the study of floriography (the “language of flowers” or “selam”), floral poetic garlands and bouquets, the rose motif, the Christmas tree symbol, and unique authorial botanical constructions. The paper further presents an original analytical framework for interpreting key floral symbols — such as the rose, the fir tree, the nameless flower, the blue flower, and flowers of evil — contextualizing them within broader literary discourse. Findings indicate a significant increase in floropoetics scholarship between 2000 and 2025, signaling the maturation of this research domain. It has been demonstrated that a methodology for the study of plants is evolving, along with the establishment of a specialized terminology system. It has been found that the representation of plants has been thoroughly examined by domestic researchers; however, the field of floropoetics requires further development.

floropoetics, plant imagery, selam lists, language of flowers, floriography, florilegia