Contехt as a Marker of Changes in the Orthodox Worldview of the Don Cossacks According to M. A. Sholokhov’s Novel «And Quiet Flows the Don»

Abstract

The article attempts to identify M. A. Sholokhov’s views on the degree of correspondence between the formal self-identification of the Don Cossacks as Orthodox Christians and their behavioral response to the social-political conditions of the life of the Cossacks in Russia in the early 20th century. Based on the analysis of those fragments of the novel «And Quiet Flows the Don», which contain the words of religious semantics as certain lexical markers, the article proves that the writer had depicted the significant changes in the confession of the Orthodox faith by the Don Cossacks in the direction from God-centrism to anthropocentrism and materialism.

Keywords

• sholokhov
• «and quiet flows the don»
• traditional cossack values
• orthodox worldview
• faith
• god-centrism
• anthropocentrism
• lexical marker
• context