ПОЭТИКА ИМЕНИ В РАННЕЙ ПРОЗЕ А.П. ЧЕХОВА: ЗООЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ОНОМАСТИКОН
POETICS OF NAME IN A.P. CHEKHOV’S EARLY PROSE: ZOOLOGICAL ONOMASTICON

Summary/Abstract: A.P. Chekhov actively used animalistic surnames and zoonominations in his early works, thereby attributing appropriate psychological and moral qualities to his characters. As a rule, they allow to achieve the comic effect, on which the writer’s artistic world is based, as well as reveal his personal attitude to the character. A.P. Chekhov’s characters are not only given surnames, which are semantically associated with animals, birds, insects (Loshadinykh, Perepelkin, Chervyakov, etc.). The author also invents bright nominations which are semantically related to the habits of animals (Lyagavaya-Grizlova, Khryukin, Ukusilov, etc.) and animalistic nicknames (Il’ka Sobach’i Zubki, Shchur, Sychikha). Furthermore, animal names is one of the main methods of euphemization (“dissolute pig”, “silly goose”, “donkey”, etc.). The analysis of charactonyms with the zoological code shows the connection of A.P. Chekhov’s short stories with the literary tradition of that time and enables understanding of the author’s underlying ironic message.

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