КАТЕГОРИЯ РОДА ПРИ ОЛИЦЕТВОРЕНИИ: ОБРАЗНЫЕ ОБОЗНАЧЕНИЯ СМЕРТИ В РУССКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ
THE CATEGORY OF GENDER IN PERSONIFICATION: FIGURATIVE NAMES OF DEATH IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: The paper develops the ideas contained in the pioneering article by Y. I. Gin “The Poetics of Gender”. Specifically, the match andmismatch of gender and sex of the personifying entity and the personificator are analyzed. In this regard, the cases of death personificationin the XIX–XX centuries’ Russian prose and poetry are investigated: semantic groups of death personificators are established.Consideration of the main semantic groups shows that the ratio of the words of feminine and masculine gender varies. While it maybe generally concluded that a personified death appears in Russian literature as a female character, some groups contain a fairly largenumber of masculine names. These groups of names include designations associated with masculine roles of the society – “militant”and “combative” roles: a knight, a gunner, a soldier; occupations associated with hunting and killing: a hunter, a butcher, a hangman;the name horseman is associated with the Biblical context. In those classes, where feminine names dominate, there are alsosome names of masculine gender, e. g. man, old man, father. Their use is marked and is felt as a standing contrast to the existingtradition. During the time period in focus the evolution of the class of death personificators is observed. The class is expanded byvarious names of occupations. The image of death progressively acquires modern features in poetry of the late twentieth century. Thematerial was collected with the use of the Russian National Corpus.

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