Image of the city in M. Weller's cycles “Legends of Nevsky prospect”, “Fantasies of Nevsky prospect” and “Legends of the Arbat”

The paper dwells upon particular characteristics of constructing a city space of the capital. The material for the analysis is M. Weller’s prose cycles “Legends of Nevsky Prospect”, “Fantasies of Nevsky Prospect” and “Legends of the Arbat”. The authors study key images, draw conclusions about correlations of key topoi within Moscow and St. Petersburg spaces, and reflect upon the concept of the man and the city in each work. The authors put forward a productive method based on theses of Russian and foreign literature studies. The results of the present research enlarge the existing scientific worldview of perceiving the text of the capital.