The linguopoetics of D. V. Grigorovich’s short novel "The Peasant" in the context of the linguistic tradition of the 19th–20th century Russian literature (to the 200th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

This linguopoetic study of D. V. Grigorovich’s short novel "The Peasant" aims to identify features specific to the author’s creative writing style and trace the connections between the text and the linguistic and stylistic traditions of Russian literature in different epochs. The research subject is all constituents of the linguopoetic fabric of the work of art under consideration. These are linguistic units, compositional elements, stylistic devices, plot-building ideas, images, and motifs. The methods include observation, cross sampling, generalisation, linguistic material classification, and establishing the content, structural, stylistic identity of different texts. These methods helped to identify and describe the techniques of creating the lyrical context in the short novel, the place of precedent images in it, the role of syntactical parallelisms and comparisons, the functions of low colloquial and dialectal inclusions, the origins and significance of the stylistic register dynamism. The approaches of modern linguistic poetics combined with certain methods of cultural linguistics (linguoculturology), psycholinguistics, and linguistic folkloristics (linguofolkloristics) enabled the author to analyse the specific features of objectifying the Russian peasantry’s customs, superstitious, and popular beliefs in the text of the short novel. Additionally, the research paper presents some psychological phenomena, the sensory field, and the recreation of the Russian people’s cultural and linguistic picture of the world. In the course of the study, the influence of Grigorovich’s artistic heritage on the literary and stylistic context of the subsequent time (i. e. the writers creating on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, the writers of the Silver Age of Russian literature as well as the "Village" Prose writers of the Soviet period) was determined.