Poetonymography as a new field of author lexicography

The paper highlights poetonymography as a new research field which contains theory and practice of compiling dictionaries of proper names in the language of a writer. The term 'poetonymography' is formed from the Russian term 'poetonym' - 'every proper name in a literary work of art', and Greek 'grapho' - 'to write, to describe'. The object of poetonymography is a literary text, the subject is the onym lexicon in it. The paper contains the following components: 1) a brief history of poetonymography development; 2) some basic principles of poetonymography; 3) a few entries made for the future dictionary of poetonyms in the language of the Russian poet Nikolay Gumilev. The practice of proper names lexicography has a long history. In Russia the first indices of proper names were composed in the 15th-16th centuries. In the 19th century, first indices of proper names in the language of a writer were composed, and the first dictionary containing a description of the onym lexicon in a literary monument was created. The theory of author lexicography began to be established in Russia and in Ukraine in the 20th century. Traditionally, proper names were not included in dictionaries of writer's language, although some theoretical aspects of onym lexicon description were considered in all large projects of author dictionaries. In spite of this, widespread works dedicated to the issues of proper names in literary text lexicography appeared at the end of the 20th century only. In 1999, the monograph Theory and Practice of Poetonym Lexicography by Valeriy M. Kalinkin was published. This book is going to be considered as the first large work on the theory of poetonymography. From the beginning of the 21st century, the issues of onym lexicon in writer's language description have been studied by Elena S. Obukhova, Larisa L. Shestakova, R. I. Taitch, Violetta I. Rogosina and other scholars. Any dictionary of proper names in the language of a writer that can be presented as classical has not been created yet; and at present the theory of poetonymography is on the stage of development. In this paper some basic principles of the theory of poetonymogra-phy are represented: 1) proper names which nominate different characters but have a common form of expression are described in different entries; 2) obligatory components of the dictionary entry include reference to the category and lexical set of an onym unit, a short encyclopedic note, illustration of all contexts of the proper name usage, and a literary-onomastic comment to them. The paper illustrated by dictionary entries which show the functioning of the proper name Adam in the language of the Russian modernist poet Nikolay Gumilev. In the poet's works of art the proper name Adam has two essential meanings: 1) representation of the character of biblical mythology; 2) symbolic representation of the author's alter ego. The semantics of the proper name is only actualized in the context. The purpose of the dictionary of poetonyms is to give a multi-aspect description of proper name functioning in the language of a writer, show the interrelation between the proper name and other onym units, identify transonymisation and onyms variability. The author of the paper supports the idea that poetonymography can become a perspective field of author lexicography. The dictionaries of poetonyms give the opportunity to understand the systematicity of poet's poetonymicon and special features of his/her poetics and style.

Keywords

Authors

References