RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism (Jun 2024)

Semiotics of the “Samarkand text”

  • Eleonora F. Shafranskaya,
  • Gulchira T. Garipova,
  • Yulia U. Matenova

DOI
https://doi.org/10.22363/2312-9220-2024-29-1-34-45
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 29, no. 1
pp. 34 – 45

Abstract

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The purpose of the research is to identify and study the differential features of the phenomenon of the “Samarkand text”, which confidently declares itself as one of the phenomena in a number of world local texts. The authors note that despite its geographical relationship with the Central Asian region, it is widely represented in world literature and culture in general, and has a polysemantic and functional representation. An attempt was made to identify obvious and non-obvious forms of his aesthetic models, as well as to systematize the principles of designing his world model, eidetic image, and urban locus. The authors studied texts from a number of epoch-making periods (from the 15th to the 21st century), belonging to various cultures and forms of literature (literary and artistic: historical novels, fiction, poetic lines; multiple forms and genres of non-fiction literature: travelogues, philosophical essays, memoirs, letters, verbatim report, etc.). Research analytics allowed to arrive at the following results. Samarkand as a city with an ancient history, as a center of science, culture, arts, a place with a unique landscape, topology and way of life is reflected in a wide variety of literary sources. Taken together, they present an image of a city that has all the signs of an authentic cultural code. The literary model of the “Samarkand text” is formed as a semiotic field with a wide range of its own stable, original dominant features that distinguish it from other texts and at the same time allow the phenomenon to be rightfully included in the overall system of local fields of world culture.

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