Folklore and Literary Tradition in the Riddles of Basil Levshin

Abstract

At the article the prosaic riddles of Basil Levshin, the writer of the second half of the XVIII century, are considered in the context of Russian folklore and literary traditions. Riddles are classified according to their thematic focus, a way to create interpretive field, the subject-object organization. In the process of comparative analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that most of the riddles of the writer characterized by cognitive and heuristic orientation. They reflected both cognitive picture of the world in the representation of contemporary society, and the specifics of the national concept sphere, as well as the submission of the author of the mythological model of the world.

Keywords

• interpretative field coding part of the riddle, cognitive picture of the world, national concept sphere, mythological picture of the world, the implication, explication, perceptual features, cognitive and heuristic orientation