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Title of Article

STRANGE COUNTRIES’ NAIV AMATEUR: GEOGRAPHY IN A. CANTEMIR’S SATIRES


Issue
2
Date
2019

Section
XVIII CENTURY

Article type
scientific article
UDC
821.161.1
Pages
7-23
Keywords
А.Д. Кантемир, сатиры, географическая топика, русская поэзия, А.С. Пушкин, A. Cantemir, Satires, Geography, Russian Poetry, A. Pushkin


Authors
Dovgiy Olga Lvovna
Moskovskiy gosudarstvennyy universitet imeniM.V. Lomonosova, Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennyy gumanitarnyy universitet


Abstract
The paper continues the series of author's publications devoted to the microphilological analysis of A. Cantemir’ satires. The construction of satires is considered by the author to be a united text complex, a joint poetic world, admissive to unlimited amount of interpretations through different research prisms. The results achieved when changing optics clearly demonstrate the efficiency of defamiliarization device. Herein geography is taken as a prism. Numerous Russian and foreign topographical names in satires are functionally significant both at the «RES» level and at the «VERBA» level. Each geographic name turns out to be a nerve node, activating the most diverse semantic -convergence?, the main of which are time and memory. Geography in satires is presented widely. Here and Moscow, and Moscow region, and St. Petersburg, and Siberia, and European France and Italy, and exotic India, China, "Arap" countries. The geographic boundaries of the satyr world are expanded by notes, where Cantemir gives detailed information about all the characters mentioned, either real, historical, and fictional. Important is also the "historical" ("deeds of bygone days" expressed in geographic categories), and the "fantastic" geography (the mythological world of ancient Greece and Rome, with a detailed description of the gods' habitats, and the world of satyr forest people). The whole range of diverse artistic effects from the masterly use of geographic topography (including ways to achieve an ironic tone, the main thing in satires) is an organic part of the stock of readymade words, transferred by Cantemir by Russian poetry. Methods of multifunctional use of geographic names, applied by Cantemir, are adopted and developed by subsequent Russian poetry - in particular, by Pushkin (alas, often without an awareness of the genetic link). Therefore, the title of the article, which includes Pushkin's quotation in the context of Cantemir’s satires, seems appropriate: Cantemir’s actual storage of topics and techniques turns out to be an inevitable basis for philological "excavations" and "deleting layers" when analyzing a lot of poetic texts.

File (in Russian)