Sovremennye Issledovaniâ Socialʹnyh Problem (Oct 2020)
PORTRAIT AND ITS FUNCTION IN TALES BY N.M. KONONOV
Abstract
Purpose. The article considers the stylistic features of the portrait description in the stories Eugenia’s Genius (1998), USE in Two Stages (2012), Svetotomy (2002) by N.M. Kononov. The purpose of the study is to identify the main functions of portrait descriptions in the above-mentioned works. In accordance with the purpose, the following tasks are solved in the work: 1. to give a definition of the literary portrait; 2. to describe the most common types and kinds of portrait characteristics; 3. to identify the main features of the artistic portrait in the works of N.M. Kononov. Method or methodology of the work. The study relies on the methods and techniques of the contrastive-comparative description, structural and semantic analysis of lexical units, as well as on the analysis of vocabulary definitions, intertextual analysis and contextual analysis method. Results. The study revealed that N.M. Kononov prefers a dynamic minimized portrait description over an extensive one that contains the author’s assessment of the character’s appearance and behaviour. It is found that in the stories, the character’s personality and behaviour do not correspond to their appearance. The author comes to the conclusion that in Kononov’s works, the artistic description of the character’s appearance and behaviour serves a sole goal, i.e. disclosing the character’s personality, emphasizing the crisis of morality in modern society. Practical implications. The results of this study can be used in studying the cognitive features of literary texts, in interpretive linguistics, in reading special courses on contemporary Russian postmodernism, as well as in developing lectures and practical courses on text linguistics.
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