ANTONYMY AS A MEANS OF PORTRAITING SOCIAL INEQUALITY IN THE DRAMATIC POEM "IN THE CATACOMBS" BY LESYA UKRAINKA

Abstract

The purpose of the scientific research, the results of which are described in this article, is to identify and analyze the facts of antonymy, by using which Lesya Ukrainka creates a contractive image of social inequality between persons who are characters in the dramatic poem "In the Catacombs", and to determine the specificity of this language and artistic medium in the author's picture of the world. The object of study are lexemes and replicas that illuminate the social background of relations between representatives of the ancient Roman society during the era of persecution of Christians. The subject of this study is the functioning mechanisms of the revealed antonymic language mediums in the dramatic poem "In the Catacombs" and their role in creating the social space of this work. The methods of sociolinguistic, semantic and contrastive analysis, as well as the descriptive method, are applied. The result of the analysis is the identification of facts of artistic antonymy in the replicas of the characters, primarily the Christian bishop and the neophyte slave, in the dispute about social justice. Some conclusions were made, in particular: antonymy is the leading artistic device of the dramatic poem "In the Catacombs", by using which Lesya Ukrainka highlights the God-loving positions of people who disagree with social inequality in society and are ready to fight for social fairness; antonym pairs in the work are distinguished at the lexical, phraseological and textual levels; the main conflicting antonym pair in this poem is SLAVE ≠ FREE. Socially conditioned antonymous pairs MAN ≠ WOMAN; CHRISTIAN ≠ PAGAN; GOD / KING ≠ HUMAN also intensify the conflict.