Means of axiological positioning of masculinity in medieval literary discourse (on the material of DECT and BFM-GRAAL corpuses)

The article is devoted to the axiological language portraying of the knight in literary discourse of the 11th-13th centuries in order to reconstruct the image of a medieval man. The gender category of masculinity is essential in the Middle Ages androcentric culture. Masculinity refers to a complex of socio-psychological components: samples of behavior, psycho-emotional traits and social status, which are determined by the basis of gender peculiar to man. The corpus linguistics methods are applied on the material of two francophone diachronic corpuses. The first one is the Electronic Dictionary of Chretien de Troyes, or DECT (Dictionnaire Electronique de Chretien de Troyes), which consists of five novels of the Old French author. The second one is the Base of the medieval French, or BFM-GRAAL (Base du Franjais Medieval), containing a 13th-century anonymous novel Queste del Saint Graal. Together the two corpuses contain more than 330 000 language units. In addition to the representative volume, both corpuses have a morphosyn-tactic markup and automatic search tools. These analytical capabilities allow identifying and classifying the axiological language representation of masculinity in medieval writings. The masculine identity is analyzed by the example of the knight (chevalier) - a member of the elite military class who represents the reference personality with basic social and cultural values of that age. The linguistic reconstruction of the knight image allows reproducing the medieval mentality in terms of ideological, ethical-value and social representations. In the practical part of the article, a step-by-step computer analysis algorithm for each corpus is presented. As a result of DECT analysis, the key axiological characteristics used in the knight portrait are revealed: generalized ameliotory, positive military, moral, social-courteous, external and pejorative traits. The simulated value hierarchy demonstrates that the most important components of the masculine identity are ameliotory, physical, social-courteous and military traits; pejorative characteristics are the least common. It is shown that the medieval artistic text has an instructive function, as the reader perceives the knight as an anthropo-logic archetype who personifies some virtues. The results of the BFM-GRAAL corpus analysis are a three-part model of the knight masculine identity. It includes the following components: the ideal of a master - a member of the upper feudal class, the ideal of a Christian - a clergyman, and the ideal of a vassal - a warrior loyal to his lord. At the same time, in this corpus, ameliotory socio-moral and spiritual values seem more revealing than military ones. As a result, the article demonstrates the knight-Christian standard. The collective positive masculine identity contains a symbolic objectification of virtues and sins. Masculine identity is based on the fundamental opposition "good / bad", which allows to realize the moralizing goals and to spread the courteous Christian worldview.

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