Category of authorial modality and the author image in the written works of Catherine the Great: a functional-semantic analysis

the article is devoted to the study of the category of authorial modality in the written works of Catherine the Great as a tool that reveals her worldview, axiological orientations, and author image. On the material of her epistolary legacy (correspondence with Prince Potemkin) and artistic texts (the fairy tales "About the Tsarevich Chlor" and "About the Tsarevich Fevey"), a functional-semantic analysis of modal microfields (desirability, necessity, possibility) and means of expressing modality is conducted. It has been established that in the epistolary genre explicit means (modal verbs, predicatives) predominate, conveying the imperative and rational orientations, which reflects Catherine's role as an enlightened ruler. In the artistic texts, contextual modality dominates, realized through lexical repetitions, dialogic structures, and plot contrasts, emphasizing the author’s Enlightenment ideas. The study revealed the genre specificity of expressing authorial modality: in letters it serves as a tool for direct impact on the addressee, while in fairy tales it functions as a means of implicit transmission of Enlightenment values. Special attention is paid to the connection of linguistic means with the cultural-historical context, including the influence of the concepts of absolute monarchy and anthropocentrism. The results of the work demonstrate that the analysis of authorial modality allows the reconstruction of an individual authorial perception of reality, as well as the identification of mechanisms for integrating personal and political discourses in the texts of Catherine the Great.

authorial modality, subjective modality, author image, axiological orientations, modal microfields, Catherine the Great, epistolary genre, artistic text, contextual modality, Enlightenment ideas