The poetic specificity of Gilda's "On the Death of Britain" and the "Hesperica Famina": a pragmatic aspect and a dominant analysis. On the 135th anniversary of the birth of B. I. Yarkho (1889-1942)

Abstract

Τhis article deals with the work of the British writer Gildas the Wise "On the Ruin of Britain" and the poetic text "Hisperica Famina", written in the British archipelago (presumably in Ireland). Both works are written in Latin and represent milestones in the history of the Hiberno-British literature of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. There is no consensus about dating to a year or at least a decade for both texts. "On the Ruin of Britain" was written presumably in the late V — early VI centuries; the Hisperica Famina are usually attributed to the second half of the VII century. "On the Ruin of Britain" contains a brief historical sketch and an protracted invective against the kings and clergy of Britons. The Hisperica Famina represent the Latin versification practice of Hibernian scribes. The methodological ideas of Boris I. Yarkho (1889-1942), set out in his fundamental work "A Methodology of Precise Literary Studies", serve as a conceptual basis for this research. On its basis, the author of the article identifies complexes of stylistic features and their compositional distribution which reflects poetic dominants common to Gildas and the author of the Hisperica Famina (so called faminator). The tendency of syntactic interlocking in the Hisperica Famina regularly prevails over the same tendency in "On the Ruin of Britain", it indicates that a specific attitude to the syntactical style, usual for the faminator and his poetic circle, began to form back in the Gildas's era. The common features of both texts show the prevalence of certain poetic dominants and can serve as a serious argument in defense of the thesis of the continuity from Gildas or writers of his circle to the faminator. The stylometry method may be very useful for comparing texts even if they they differ in genre and era.