Names and images in early Gothic prose of Count A.K. Tolstoy (based on the story “Meeting in Three Hundred Years”)

Abstract

The purpose of the publication is to concretize the idea of the artistic speech and style of the language of A.K. Tolstoy (1817–1875) in the verbal embodiment by revealing the specifics of using their own names in one of the early stories of his Gothic dilogy “Meeting in Three Hundred Years”, as well as considering the figurative system of the work through the prism of the name – usage by Tolstoy. The main methods are a historical-literary one, ideological-thematic analysis, observation, continuous sampling, contextual analysis, classification. The results of the study are associated with the disclosure of the distinctive features of the onomastic storytelling space: the specifics in the use of onomastic classes, the participation of names in modeling the chronotope and the formation of a retrospective text, in the creation of the French coloring of the work, the implementation of the author’s picture of the world, determined by aesthetic positions. The features of the figurative system of the story are revealed on a semiological basis, taking into account the leading principle of mirroring (enantiomorphism). The article shows that the parallel mirror-shaped oppositions of anthropoetonyms created by A.K. Tolstoy, along with topopoetonyms and other onomastic classes, serve as the compositional core of the story, determine the originality of the ideological-thematic plan and space-temporal relations, express the motive of duality and the concept of romantic two-worldness. Names and images, respectively, play a key role in the “Meeting in Three Hundred Years”, since they form an idea of the features of Tolstoy’s idiostyle and serve as the basis for the implementation of author’s intentions. The novelty of the study is determined by the results of the study in the use of poetonyms and the construction of a figurative system in Tolstoy early romantic prose.