Grammar of Poetry in A. Cantemir’s Satires

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Absract: The article attempts to approach Antioh Cantemir’s satires from the micro-philological perspective, thereby shifting away from studying merely “content”. The specifics of this method of analysis is in viewing the satires as a single textual unit, all levels of which are closely interrelated and informed by the author’s central ideas. Cantemir was a skilful master of poetics. The text of satires is organized in such a way that all the changes at the microlevel are semiotically significant and serve poetical purposes. However, to notice this, we need to zoom in on the words with a magnifying micro-philological glass. Cantemir used to pay particular attention to Grammar. The analyses prove that the smallest morphological changes in the text of satires are operative for deeper understanding of author’s intention. This paper deals only with categories of number and case of nouns. Although Cantemir succeeded in fully actualizing the potential of a word, including its morphological features; he expanded the scope of words’ function and effectively used them for artistic expressiveness. Studying the grammatical dimension of the satires, using the micro-philological approach, might be very productive for interdisciplinary studies. In his satires, Cantemir, well in advance, provided abundant illustrative material for many theoretical points, substantiated by the works of the Russian formalists, and of R. Jacobson.

Keywords: Cantemir, satires, micro-philology, noun, number, case, polyptoton, grammar of poetry.

: Category: Vol 76, NO 1 (2017)

Pages: 15-21

Author: Olga L. Dovgy

Information about the author: Candidate of Philological Sciences, Senior researcher at the Faculty of Journalism of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, 9 Mokhovaya str., Moscow, 119019, Russia olga-dovgy@yandex.ru

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