THE CONCEPT OF 'KUTEYNIK' IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the notion of 'kuteynik', which spread around post-reform Russia. Explanatory, historical, dialect and other dictionaries, fiction literature, publicistic works and ego-documents are used as sources. Several concurrent processes associated with the evolution of this term in the 16th — 20th centuries are analyzed: the switch from neutral semantics to pejorative and the occasional return to neutral; its transition from church lexicon to vulgar, then to literary and at last to archaic language; the expansion of its meaning — from a certain churchman who cooked 'kutia' to all the lower-tier clerics and then to all clergy and the people with clerical roots. The history of this notion is analyzed in detail for the first time, not only in linguistic terms, but also in connection with social processes. The period of expansion of the term 'kuteynik' as pejorative (18th — early 20th centuries) was the time of clergy’s establishment as a class with hereditary traditions and isolated higher stratum (priests) and lower stratum (deacons and lower clerics) within it. Nobles, peasants and clerics used the notion of 'kuteynik' in different meanings. For the first two groups it was a pejorative term (for different reasons) and a marker of exclusion, while clerics could use it both as pejorative and as a neutral word. The author assumes that hereditary mechanisms created a demand for pejoratives that shifted the focus from the spiritual, pastoral clerical service to specific foods, It concentrated on everyday life, which had its specifics in the homogeneous social environment and was is contrast with the traditions of other strata.