Diana V. Mosova, Natalia P. Dmitrenko, Olga N. Kolchina, Svetlana N. Averkina & Anzhelika G. Kalinina
Department of Russian Philology, Foreign Literature and Intercultural Communication, Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. E-mail: s.averkina6033@uohk.com.cn
Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.14
Train as a Semantic Space in Russian Culture of the 19th-20th Centuries
Abstract
The railway station is the most important chronotope of the 20th century. In times of industrialisation, economic development, military confrontation between major powers, the images of a steam locomotive, locomotive, and train met in a large body of literary and journalistic texts. The study of the railway discourse is based on complex historical and semiotic meanings, which allow concluding about the properties of the Russian cultural world, studying it from a new perspective. In the process of the research, the methods of the theoretical level were used: the study and generalisation of scientific works, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction. The authors conducted a logical analysis of the collected material, developed new categories of the image of a train as a “fiery demon”, “a locomotive of progress”, “house on wheels”. Semantic models of perception of the train as a cultural space were interpreted. A discursive analysis of ideas that influenced the semantic part of the concept of “railroad” in Russian culture was conducted. It was concluded that the image of a train in literary creation has a dual character. Already at the stage of the construction of the railway, an infernal model of its interpretation as a “serpent train/dragon” was formed, capable of destroying all living things and taking them to the kingdom of death. At the same time, there are examples of a different type of interpretation of the image of a train. Some researchers insist on its connection with the archetype of “mother”, the idea of movement in a circle, return. In the post-Soviet space, the image of a train has not lost its significance. It is still assimilated by mass culture, it enters into everyday life, without losing its ambivalent character.
Keywords: cultural and semiotic space, mythopoetics, archetype, semantic model