Artsakh was an important cultural center of medieval Armenia, where literature, miniature painting, architecture, and sculpture flourished.The 13th–14th centuries marked a period of cultural renaissance in Artsakh, during which luxurious manuscripts were created, monastic complexes were constructed, and artistic thought thrived.Miniature painting in Artsakh developed as an independent school, simultaneously influenced by the traditions of the Cilician and Vaspurakan schools, while preserving a unique national character.Gandzasar, Dadivank, and other monasteries were not only religious centers but also cultural and scriptorium hubs where valuable manuscripts were produced.Testimonies of historians M. Kaghankatvatsi, K. Gandzaketsi confirm Artsakh’s powerful Armenian and cultural past, emphasizing its Christian and Armenian identity.The reliefs and carvings of Artsakh demonstrate stylistic uniqueness, a high level of artistry, and a harmonious combination of spiritual and secular themes.In modern times, the cultural heritage of Artsakh is under threat, requiring scientific reassessment as well as preservation and protection strategies. The aim of the article is to reinforce the understanding of Artsakh’s Armenian cultural affiliation, reject attempts at its alienation, and promote the preservation of historical memory.

KeywordsArtsakh Armenian medieval art architecture literature miniature historical memory spiritual values cultural heritage.

This article explores the thematic and stylistic parallels between contemporary Armenian poetry-particularly the works of Hovhannes Grigoryan and Vardan Hakobyan-and the French surrealist tradition. Through a comparative analysis, it highlights shared motifs such as love, memory, dreams, and linguistic freedom. Grigoryan’s poetry is marked by emotional rawness and the expressive power of silence, while Hakobyan’s texts transform love into a symbolic, dreamlike vision that blends reality with the subconscious. French surrealists like Éluard, Aragon, and Apollinaire treat love as a symbolic and ideological space, often shaped by collective memory and poetic experimentation. Although influenced by surrealism, Armenian poets reinterpret its principles through their own cultural and historical lens. The article concludes that Armenian contemporary poetry represents a unique avant-garde voice-speaking a universal language with distinctly national inflections.

KeywordsArmenian poetry French surrealism Hovhannes Grigoryan Vardan Hakobyan modern Armenian literature love memory dream freedom of language avant-garde poetic fusion

This article examines the ways in which Armenians are represented in Azerbaijani poet Sabir Rustamkhanli’s poem “Return to Karabakh” “Qarabağa dönüş”, published on December 24, 2020. The study aims to systematize the linguistic, metaphorical, and narrative devices through which the representation of a military adversary is expanded into a dehumanized image of an entire ethnic group and religious community. The analysis employs close reading, critical discourse analysis, and reception analysis. Its theoretical framework draws on psychologist and professor Nick Haslam’s distinction between animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization; social psychologist Susan Opotow’s theory of moral exclusion; social psychologist Albert Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement; and linguist Teun A. van Dijk’s approach to ideological polarization through the “us/them” dichotomy.The analysis demonstrates that the poem predominantly employs animalization, demonization, the attribution of collective guilt, vocabulary that animalizes and massifies the human body, the erasure of the adversary’s voice and individuality, and the figurative schema of “contamination–cleansing” applied to the representation of territory. These mechanisms form a structural whole with the sacralized and heroic glorification of the Azerbaijani soldier. A further finding of the study is that the majority of post-war Azerbaijani literary-critical and academic responses to the poem not only fail to problematize or critically interrogate this language but also reproduce it through non-academic formulations such as “Armenian national disease,” “Armenian character,” and “creature distant from humanity.”

KeywordsSabir Rustamkhanli Nagorno-Karabakh conflict representation of Armenians dehumanization enemy image Azerbaijani literature critical discourse