A. N. Radishchev as an "archaist and innovator": linguopoetic and linguostylistic features of the great book (to the 275th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

The article considers the most important linguopoetic and linguostylistic characteristics of A. N. Radishchev’s "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow". The research also focuses on the precedent phenomena in the text of the book, its connections with the European artistic tradition, and influence on the Russian literary language evolution, as well as on particular genres of Russian literature. The text is examined against the background of the dominant literary canons of sentimentalism at the time of its writing; the author creatively mastered some of these canons. Radishchev developed his individual style which synthesised three main linguistic elements: emotional-sensual, civic rhetorical, and common colloquial. Each of them is characterised by a certain set of linguistic means that are compositionally anchored in the text. The figurative devices of classicistic poetics, tropeic expressiveness, refined linguistic expressions borrowed from Western literature, and vocabulary new for the late 18th century form the compositional parts characteristic of the journey as a distinct literary genre. A. N. Radishchev uses Slavicisms, archaic morphological forms and obsolete syntactic constructions, neologisms based on Church Slavonic patterns to create high civic pathos and embody freedom-loving ideas. Low colloquial speech, folk phraseology, folklore inserts, aphorisms, and mixtures of styles shape the author’s narrative fragments and reflections related to specific life situations.