FUNCTIONAL CAPABILITIES OF BIBLICAL CONCEPTS IN ZAKHAR PRILEPIN’S NOVEL “ABODE”

FUNCTIONAL CAPABILITIES OF BIBLICAL CONCEPTS IN ZAKHAR PRILEPIN’S NOVEL “ABODE”

Author:  I.M. Popova

Affiliation:  Tambov State Technical University (Tambov, Russia)

Abstract:  The subject matter of the investigation is the content perception of the neorealistic Russian prose presented by Zakhar Prilepin’s novel “Abode” (2015), devoted to the search of sense in Russia’s historical way during its most complicated post-revolutionary period of life in the early 1920s.
The purpose of the research is the interpretation of the biblical concepts “naked – bare” as an ambivalent complex of mental-artistic meanings determining the main idea of the narration.
The article is written at the junction of literary criticism and linguistics that suggests studying linguistic adequacy of cognitive constructions of the artistic text in correlation with language and culture as well as language and the author’s artistic mentality.
On the one hand, within cognitive linguistics the article gives a theoretical background for the choice of terms and their meanings: artistic concept, biblical culturological concept and culture constant. The research has pointed out 18 connotations of the concept “naked – bare” which are basic for the work, 2 indigenous senses, biblical connotations, 9 historical senses, 7 contemporary actual connotations defined as “mutated concepts” in connection with their negative sense dynamics in regard to biblical symbolism.
On the other hand, the author makes use of philological methodology of artistic text interpretation and functional analysis to disclose different connotations of the concept “naked – bare” as basic text words which form its narrative structure expressing the writer’s message. The research is carried out on lexical-systematic, cognitive and composition-thematic levels of the text.
As a result, it has been concluded that the main and additional senses of the biblical concept “naked- bare” render symbolic, metaphoric, image-bearing, emotional, social, philosophical meanings which fulfil the following functions: personage characteristics, personages’ psychological states: subconsciousness disclosure in characters’ dreams; narration symbolism, the writer’s assessment of events; delineation of Russian people’s mental features; interpretation of narrative intention.

Keywords:  concept, artistic concept, culturological concept, primary literal sense, symbolic biblical connotations, mutated contemporary semantics of concepts, functions of artistic concepts

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Pages:  93-101