Folding of the American historical experience proceeded dramaticly, but brought important lessons for the development of all mankind. XXXIV International Conference of the Russian Society for the Study of American Culture, entitled "Display and interpretation of history in the culture of the United States", helped to analyze the dynamics of the processes associated with the perception of the history of North American cultural figures.
Using the example of the works of a well-known British scholar, Frances Yates, the present author analyses a rational attitude to the so-called “Western esotericism”. Yates was among the first researchers to study the esoteric (“hermeticist-cubalistic” by her terminology) element in Renaissance and early Modern time culture. She has devoted four books to this topic. Yates’s approach is considered through the prism of a few key themes: esotericism and the scientific revolution, esotericism and artistic creativity, the history of John Dee. The author places Yates’s ideas in the general context of a rational view of Western esotericism in the second half of the twentieth century
This collection of articles is devoted to the problems of philology, culture, philosophy and other humanitarian sciences which are of special interest now days.