The motivic structure of Ascetic Preaching of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov

The article deals with the work of Ignatius (Brianchaninov), holy hierarch, an outstanding Church figure and spiritual writer of the 19th century. Based on the collection of teachings Ascetic Preaching (1866), the significant features of the poetics of his work - an area that is almost not mastered by modern literary criticism - are shown. The texts of the collection are analyzed in order to identify the features of its structure, the characteristics of the factors of its integrity, ideological depth, emotional impact on readers. The author hypothesizes that the convincing force of Brianchaninov’s instructing words is caused not only by the mastery of the oratory techniques, but also by the ability to embody the Christian worldview holistically and systematically in the works “bonded” by an internal ideological and conceptual relationships. The method of structural analysis of texts is used to study the internal connections of the semantic elements of Ascetic Preaching. At the first stage of the analysis, the dominant theme of the book is revealed. Further, the motifs related to the main theme are studied, their internal connection is traced, and the principle of correlating the main and accompanying motifs with the text of Holy Scripture is shown. Based on the conducted research, the author infers that Bryanchaninov’s works have a motivic structure. The central organizing topic and leading theme of Ascetic Preaching, as well as the semantic dominant of all works by Ignatius, is repentance. This is due to the fact that the call to repentance is the basis of Christian teaching. The theme of repentance permeates all the constituent parts of the book, ensures its integrity and compositional balance, binds the disparate texts and determines the main vector of the theological arguments of its author. This theme is interwoven with related motifs, among which the main are the motifs of faith, prayer, the Last Judgment. They link each specific text with the rest of the works of the collection. Holy hierarch Ignatius correlates these motifs with images of Holy Scripture. A special group of teachings in the collection are texts that interpret the gospel parables. In particular, the motif of prayer is embodied by Brianchaninov in the images of the characters of the gospel parable about the publican and the Pharisee, the theme of repentance and the motif of God’s judgment correspond to the parable of the prodigal son. The use of Evangelical images in the development of the main motifs gives visibility to the preacher’s texts and defines a trait of his style - biblicism. These motifs are connected with each other, forming a holistic ideological and thematic unity that systematically reveals the Orthodox doctrine of salvation. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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