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Despite both being great names in semiotics, Roland Barthes and Juri Lotman have more differences than they share similarities – not only because of their different political and historico-cultural environments, but also because they do not have the same object of study: it is ‘ideology’ for Barthes, and ‘culture’ for Lotman. Thus, there is no intellectual common ground between them, yet comparing them can lead us to a more important question: what is semiotics, and what has structuralism to do with it.

The article deals with a mythological plot “fratricide” treated as the embodiment of archetypical sin – murder of one’s kin. Associative extension of this crime and its participants is described. Main lines of murderer’s behavior are grudge and uncontrolled fury caused by envy and strife for primacy. Fratricide was repeatedly represented in fiction texts. Various approaches to this plot are analyzed as presented in prose, drama and poetry by S. Gessner, S. Coleridge, G.B. Byron, A. Tarkovsky, R. Shusterovich, G. Kanevsky, A. Barkova, J. Minot, A. Zheleznov.