Bible and Small Literary Genres: Russian Proverbs, Sayings, and Quotations

• Main Author: Nadezhda Mikhailovna Orlova
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Saratov State University 2020-03-01
• Series: Жанры речи
• Subjects: precedence; bible; small folklore genres; proverbs; quotations
• Online Access: https://zhanry-rechi.sgu.ru/sites/default/files/29-35.pdf

The article considers genre aspects of set phrases of different type such as proverbs, sayings and quotations (aphorisms), going back to the Bible. The author singles out two genre aspects of the phenomena under consideration. The precedent texts (including paremias) of biblical origin themselves 1) are either genres, or at least genre-like phenomena (possibly of folklore nature, but not necessary) and in this sense have a number of important structural and substantial features and form a number of structural types, 2) are used as part of some speech genres – folklore, and literary, and non-artistic written, and conversational ones Proverbs, sayings, and quotes of the biblical source make an integral part of the language picture of the world of European nations, enriched the arsenal of figurative and expressive means and became an indispensable component of fiction Despite the complexity of defining their status as discourse and folklore phenomena, their characteristics and typologies, in the cognitive picture of the world they are combined as the biblical source concepts. Biblical language units penetrated into discourse and became part of the proverbial fund both through the books of Scripture and through collections of aphorisms These texts of small folklore and literary genres find their place in the structural and semantic classification in the paradigm of biblical precedence: single-component names of biblical concepts; multicomponent nominees that represent the core of the biblical concepts, containing a reduced version of many plots and condensing units of a higher level (texts, statements). The Russian proverbial fund includes an extensive layer of units dating back to biblical texts. In the aspect of the connection of small folklore genres and biblical expressions predicative units (sayings, quotes, proverbs) are of most interest. As an indicator of the genetic proximity of biblical statements and Russian proverbs one can name various properties, primarily figurative-associative and verbal ones. Most biblical sayings are transformed, losing in the process of folklorization propertiesof the bookish language.