Poetonymics of Modernist and Postmodernist Prose.

Abstract

The thesis is devoted to the analysis of the modernist and postmodernist prose poetonymics in terms of its origin, structure, and functional stylistics.

The thesis represents the first attempt of a holistic complex analysis of the poetonymics in modernist and postmodernist prose literary works. The epoch-making role of the poetonyms as an artistic and expressive lexical stratum, which marks the writer’s style, explains the author’s worldview, ideological, and literary intentions.

The first chapter concentrates on the onomastics basic concepts, indicates the issues of the proper names’ historical development, terminology, classificatory features, and their functions. Peculiarities of onyms in the artistic text serve as the research subject for many native and foreign scholars; the choice of the poetonyms, their semantic-stylistic features in particular, become the focal point of many works.

The second chapter presents the results of the modernist poetonymics study are outlined, i.e. the proper names genealogical, structural, and semantic features are singled out; the ethnonym and native vocabulary quantitative analysis is carried out; the prevailing role of the borrowed names is revealed (98 nominations; 92,5%); names from the native language are scarce (8 nominations; 7,5%).

The third chapter concentrates on the analysis of the postmodernist writers poetonymics, which differs from the previous era, i.e. the differential feature of this period, revealed through genealogical approach, is the increase of the borrowed anthroponyms (124 nominations; 83,2%).

The paper also focuses on the unique poetonyms where spheres of «literature», «history», «religion» serve as a basis for their formation both in the novels of postmodernism and those of modernism. The overwhelming majority of the abovementioned sources for unique names coining are shared by the prose of the both periods, however the original ones are also found: in the modernist prose these are lexical units belonging the criminal world and folklore, in the postmodernist prose – to the sphere of the cinema.

The distinctive feature of the postmodern period is the presence of the background proper names, the units based on the names of cars, newspapers and magazines, ergonyms. In the texts, the background propriety onyms are presented both in the transplanted (the original language form) and in the transliterated version.

Thus, it is proved that the proper names are an integral element of the stylistic and organisational structure of the artistic work, which reflect the author’s style and their perception of the world.