Linguistic means of creating an implicit image of a snake in M. Rapov's novel “Dawns over Russia”

Abstract

The article is devoted to identifying linguistic means of creating implicit content in a fiction text. As the research material, a relatively independent and plot-complete fragment of the historical novel by M. A. Rapov «Dawns over Russia» was chosen - the chapter «The Jackal Went to the Wolf», where one of the main features of the unique style of M. A. Rapov is most clearly manifested - the subtlest interweaving of objectively presented events and characters with their symbolic understanding, expressed implicitly. The focus is on the implicit image of a snake and the linguistic means of its creation. During the analysis it becomes clear that the symbolic image is constructed primarily through the textual lexical-semantic field with the dominant “snake”, the metaphorization of the words included in it, the involvement of explicitly presented details in the implicit context, triple repetition, actualizing the folklore motif of transformation, as well as sound and letter repetitions, designed to emphasize the acoustic and visual characteristics of the created image. Along the way, the close relationship between the explicit and implicit levels of the text content is revealed, and a deeper understanding of it is realized, thanks to which the events depicted as real correlate with the folklore plot, as well as receive an original symbolic and philosophical interpretation.