Mythological Dependency of Understanding Proper Names as Linguistic Cultural Signs in the West Russian Literary Homiletics of the Late Seventeenth Century

The paper discusses the place and role of anthroponyms in the spiritual literature of Eastern Europe (Russia, Reς Pospolita) in the second half of the 17th century. These years saw a a unique situation in the development of spiritual literature: the intersection of South Russian, Moscow and Polish Church literary traditions gave birth to a novel a non-Uniate trend in Christian homiletical literature (“West trend”), which affected the Orthodox Church in Russia, Reς Pospolita and Carpathian Rus (formerly a part of the Principality of Transylvania). The West Russian literary trend produced great spiritual works, combining Moscow ascetic experience, West Russian poetics and Polish strict methods of theological argumentation. The research addresses homiletic and methodological works of Priest Tomasz Mtodzianowski, Archimandrite Ioanniky Golyatovsky, Archbishop Lazar Baranovich, with the main focus laid on the works of St Dimitry, Metropolitan of Rostov, and Stefan Jaworski, Metropolitan of Ryazan and Murom, Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal throne. It is found out that the West-Russian literary tradition provides an anthroponym with a special supra-phenomenal essence: it cannot be vulgarised, debased or artificially constructed; and characterises the referent at which it points out in some metaphysical, supernatural way. The Christian homiletic literature of West Russia in the second half of the 17th century demosntrated the sacral and mystical understanding a person's name, which often tended to a mythological understanding. The mythological elements are widely included in West Russian Christian literary homiletics of the time discussed.

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