The food code in "The Master and Margarita" by M. A. Bulgakov

Abstract

The article considers wine, fish, meat, and the main dish names as components of the food code manifested in the novel "The Master and Margarita". The food code can be defined as a system of words-symbols due to its semiotic nature and dependence on the national cultural heritage. The research aims to correlate the symbolic meaning of food names in the Christian worldview with their interpretation suggested by the writer. The unit of study is the lexical-semantic group (LSG) with the common seme ‘food’. Each word in this LSG is the signifier "A" of the symbol. The signified is verbalised in the immediate context in the form of a word, phrase, or sentence and is marked with the letter "B". The result of the study is a system of double symbols. Their signifier varies substantially in the words belonging to different lexical-semantic groups. The signified of such double symbols remains unchanged and is represented by only four symbolic meanings: 1) ‘death or illness’; 2) ‘man and his soul’; 3) ‘vice’; 4) ‘victim’. In addition to double symbols, the symbolic meaning in the text is expressed by words with a vague meaning, phraseological units concealed in the text, climax homogeneous series, semantic sentence parallelism, biblical allusions to the repast theme. This elaborate symbolic system conveys the key point of Woland’s arrival in Moscow, i. e. punishing vice when "it will be given to each one according to his faith".