Epithets in Story “Der große Wildenberg” by Siegfried Lenz

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the epithets used by the modern German writer Siegfried Lenz to build a storyline and create images of his characters in the story “Der große Wildenberg”, which reveals social problems, disappointments, worries and fears of an ordinary person waiting for a meeting with a high-ranking person. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the epithets that serve as a means of realizing the artistic space, determining the place in it and forming ideas about the main character — as stated in the title “the great Wildenberg” is analyzed and de-scribed with special attention in this work. It is shown how, throughout the story, with the help of characterizing words, the authority, greatness and power of Wildenberg are generated, maintained and at the end unexpectedly collapsed, which deceives the reader’s expectations. Relevance is associated with the identification of functional and structural features of the epithets available in the work. The following types of qualifying lexemes were found: pictorial and emotional epithets; epithets with direct meaning and tropical; evaluative and psychological epithets; simple and extended epithets; free and included in phraseological units epithets; common language epithets.