Philological analysis of the text: reception of I. A. Bunin's short fiction “The Epitaph”

Abstract

The object of this research is Ivan Bunin’s prose of the early period – “The Epitaph”. I. A. Bunin is a Neorealist writer of the turn of the XIX – XX centuries, publicist, a unique representative of the white émigré. The subject of this research is the reception of “The Epitaph” by modern audience based on the command of philological text analysis. Having analyzed the traditional semantic components of the literary text (that are part of the concept of “philological text analysis”), the authors offer modern approaches towards representation of the established semantic categories of the text, demonstrate their functionality on the linguistic level, analyze the methods of their lexical representation and verbalization, which determines the novelty of this article. The goal lies in philological analysis of I. A. Bunin's short fiction “The Epitaph”, taking into account the historical-cultural context of its creation, the role of extralinguistic factors in the text, and their reflection on the linguistic level, semantics of the title and keywords in the ideological-thematic content of the work and expression of the authorial position. Alongside the traditional methods of academic philology, such as historical-cultural, biographical, commentary reading, linguistic-stylistic analysis, the research employs the techniques of cognitive linguistics. This article is first to describe the experience of a commentary reading of I. A. Bunin's short fiction “The Epitaph”, which is based on cognition of the semantic components of the work through the prism of a linguostylistic approach within the framework of philological analysis. The authors reveal techniques of reading the text, placing emphasis on the lexical means of representation of the key semantic categories, which on the one hand reflect the writer’s worldview , while on the other – form his individual writing style. Such articulation of the problem determines the prospects for the study of other proses of I. A. Bunin.