Realization of traditional images of comparative tropes with diminutive dendronyms in the Russian poetry of the 19–21st centuries

Russian poetry of the 19–21st centuries, from the perspective of the relationship of ‘cultural-stereotypical (traditional) – author’s individual’. The analysis of 725 fragments from the Russian poetic works of the 19–21st centuries reveals the ways of word formation and the composition of diminutive dendronyms, as well as the composition of folk poetic, general poetic and individual author’s images of comparative tropes representing these diminutives as subjects of comparison: girl; love attraction, longing; to cry (tears), to grieve, to yearn; fertility; separation; bitter, unhappy fate, orphanhood; gold, silver; emerald; smoke; clothing; fire; pattern, mesh product; infantas by Velasquez, ermine coat; calico; fidelity. The reference-denotative features of the corresponding realia, motivating the choice of figurative associations are determined: a thin trunk, flexible branches, serrated, heart-shaped leaves, flowering trees, fruit trees. The techniques that help make stereotypical images of comparison in the Russian poetic language individualized are established: the inclusion in the composition of an extended anthropomorphic metaphor; updating by means of occasional epithets, lexical variation of the components of the trope. The stable semantic connotations of diminutive dendronyms are singled out: ‘shy’, ‘timid’, ‘meek’, ‘slender’, ‘tall’, ‘gentle’, ‘curls’, ‘braids’, ‘thin figure’, ‘beauty’, ‘breasts’, ‘captivate’, ‘innocence’, as well as the ways of their representation in poetic contexts: extended metaphors ‘autumnal withering of a tree – withering of female beauty’; memories of the lyrical hero about close people; parallelism of the images of a tree and a human condition; conventional epithets (weeping, bitter); features of the situation of a literary text. The results of the study allow us to improve the understanding of how comparative tropes with diminutive dendronyms develop dynamically in the Russian poetic language.

the Russian poetry, S. A. Yesenin, diminutive, dendronym, poetic image, tropes