Dmitry A. Romanov

Professor, Doctor of Science (Philology), Head of the Center for the Russian Language and Regional Linguistic Studies

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-3-206-214

Abstract. The article deals with the system of personal names created by Leo Tolstoy for one of his key stories of the “late” period. The study of onyms takes place at the intersection of the internal and external ("vertical") contexts of the work. The direct lexical (anthroponymic) design of the composition, the evolution of the writer’s creative idea, and his parallel work on other texts are considered. The study of the semantics of anthroponymic lexemes involves the use of data from lexicography relevant to the first quarter of the 21st century and contemporary to Tolstoy. The interpretation of proper names is based on the author's worldview, reflected in his publicism, diaries, epistolary heritage, statements written by contemporaries, etc. Associative connections of anthroponyms with phenomena of reality, historical events, actions and destinies of political, church, legendary personalities, etc. motivated by reliable information from the creative history of the work and other works of the author of the late period (1890s – 1900s). The semantic connections of anthroponyms in the story "The Forged Coupon" with precedent proper names, as well as with appellatives of a foreign language, dialect and vernacular nature are noted. The semantics of anthroponyms in Tolstoy's text and the allusions built on their basis are explained on the basis of classical interpretations of the Russian school of onym studies (V. A. Nikonov), as well as approaches of V. P. Grigoriev's textological school, developed in the Department of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Poetics of the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of RAS (L. I. Kolodyazhnaya, L. L. Shestakova, N. A. Fateeva). The conclusions are hypothetical, not absolute. They can be useful for modern linguistic and literary Tolstoy studies, which have a rather differentiated but broad scientific area.
Keywords: text, proper name, anthroponym, semantics, etymology, allusions, context.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Romanov, DA 2023, ‘Proper Names (Anthroponyms) in Leo Tolstoyʼs Story «The Forged Coupon»’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 3 (15), pp. 206–214, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-3-206-214 (in Russ.)

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