Abstract
This article is devoted to the research of features of the specific onomastic lexis for denotation of divine creatures and its usage in the literary genre of horrors on the example of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s short story “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”. In the centre of author’s attention is the study of theonyms’ influence, as a lexical instrument, on the formation of the atmosphere of horror and construction of specific text space of works of horror literature. Theonyms are proper names of deities in some pantheon which belongs to a certain religion or mythology. In this research, we assess the use of separate theonyms from the pantheon of religion of ancient Egypt. The term “theonym” describes the phenomena of the ideal world, which differs in the understanding of people. Theonymic peculiarity of words can show off while solving problems not only of linguistic character, but also philosophical, culturological etc. This article studies set of characteristics, which are typical in the literature of horror. Such features are optional for a genre, but absolutely necessary for the creation of the story which states the task to “frighten”. Attention is focused on such characteristics: identity with the character, commonness of events, supersaturating of story with commonness, consequences of protagonist’s decisions, complexity of timelines, possible but optional absence of ending, use of “strong” words for the festering of atmosphere. Horror features are described through the direct dependence of theonyms use, which strengthen the effect of “terrible” and put the accent on certain historic character of events.
Highlights
Modern Ukrainian linguistics almost entirely overlooked the phenomenon of the literature of horror and lexical tools that help to create this genre
The profound research of American literature of horror was done by British writer and editor Brian Docherty in his book “American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King” with essays discussing such representatives of genre as Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Stephen King etc. (Docherty, 1990)
An American writer Jason Colavito researches the genre of horror in his works such as “Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge, and the Development of the Horror Genre”, exploring the “intimate” connection between horror fiction and science (Calavito, 2008)
Summary
Modern Ukrainian linguistics almost entirely overlooked the phenomenon of the literature of horror and lexical tools that help to create this genre. Different sources define horror as a genre of literature, whose goal is the creation of fear, of something terrible, disgust in the audience of readers – in other words, creating an atmosphere of terror. The more often mentioned the names such as Horus, Anubis and others, the closer author brings reader to the final scene, where fantasy characters are going to feed some creature that, in the opinion of the main character, is an epitome of the top of someone from the Pantheon of Egyptian gods This “who” is the most terrible of all theonym names owners:. The character thinks that a terrible creature the size of a hippopotamus, which he saw, was only the front paw of the giant monster To put it in a nutshell, the scariest moment of the Lovecraft’s story is the final scene, which describes the bearer of the theonym name Unknown. These “strong” adjectives are used to describe the main creature – bearer of the theonym name, for instance, supreme horror, hideous, loathsome abnormality etc.: “That question, so innocent and whimsical assumed in my dream a meaning of frenetic and hysterical madness ... what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent?” (Lovecraft, 2015, p. 18)
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