2012 №2 (13)

Back to the Table of Contents

Anatoly A. Fomin
Ural Federal University
Ekaterinburg, Russia

Squaring the Circle of the Karenin Family: On the Associative Potential of the Main Character’s Two Names in the Novel by Leo Tolstoy

Citation information: Voprosy onomastiki (Problems of Onomastics). 2012. № 2 (13). Р. 63–82 (in Russian)

Abstract: The article analyzes the associative potential of the family names Karenina (Каренина) and Oblonskaya (Облонская) both belonging to the main character of the famous novel. In the text, the two co-referential names form some correlated series of associations (Kareninacarré – square; Oblonskaya – облый – round), each name being a sign for a group of meanings symbolically linked with a square or a circle and reinforcing the semantic potential of each other. The author shows that the juxtapositions and the oppositions of the abovementioned meanings relying on the traditional opposition of squares and circles in culture are used by Tolstoy as an important means to deepen the imaginative and conceptual aspects of the novel.

Key words: literary onomastics, poetic onomastics, literary proper name, poetonym, proper name poetics, phonosemantics of a proper name, associative background of proper names

References

Bolshoy akademicheskiy slovar russkogo yazyka [The Great Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language] (2nd ed., vols. 1-17). (1991). Moscow; Saint-Petersburg: Nauka.

Tsentr genealogicheskikh issledovaniy [Genealogical Research Centre]. Retrieved from http://rosgenea.ru

Dvoretskiy, I. Kh. (Ed.). (1958). Drevnegrechesko-russkiy slovar [A Greek–Russian Dictionary] (Vols. 1–2). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo inostrannykh i natsionalnykh slovarey.

Egorov, V. G. (Ed.). (1960). Russko-chuvashskiy slovar [A Russian-Chuvash Dictionary]. Cheboksary: Chuvashskoye knizhnoye izdatelstvo.

Fedosyuk, Yu. A. (Ed.). (1996). Russkie familii: populyarniy etimologicheskiy slovar [Russian Family Names: A Popular Etymological Dictionary]. Moscow: Russkiye Slovari.

Gafurov, A. (1971). Lev i kiparis: o vostochnyh imenah [A Lion and a Cypress: On Oriental Names]. Moscow: Nauka.

Nikonov, V. A. (Ed.). (1993). Slovar russkikh familiy [A Dictionary of Russian Family Names]. Moscow: Shkola-Press.

Psihologiya i fizicheskaya reabilitaciya “Links-Psikholodzhi” [Psychology and Physical Rehabilitation “Links-Psychology”]. Retrieved from http://www.soulfit.ru/psihogeometricheskij

Shmelev, A. G. (2008). Zigzag, lzhiviy kvadrat i… bolshe nichego [Zigzag, false square and... nothing more]. In: Human technologies: HR-laboratoriya “Gumanitarnye tekhnologii” [HR-Laboratory “Human Technologies”]. Retrieved from http://www.ht.ru/press/articles/?view=art326

Skvortsov, M. I. (Ed.). (1985). Chuvashsko-russkiy slovar [A Chuvash-Russian Dictionary]. Moscow: Russkiy yazyk.

Slovar inostrannyh slov [A Dictionary of Loanwords] (14th ed.) (1987). Moscow: Russkiy yazyk.

Slovar russkih familiy [A Dictionary of Russian Family Names]. Retrieved from http://www.nashislova.ru/fam

Slovar russkih narodnyh govorov [A Dictionary of Russian Popular Dialects] (1965–). Moscow; Leningrad (Saint-Petersbourg): Nauka.

Superanskaya, A. V. (Ed.). (2005). Slovar russkih lichnykh imen [A Dictionary of Russian Personal Names]. M: Eksmo.

Superanskaya, A. V. (Ed.). (2010). Slovar narodnykh form russkih imen [A Dictionary of Popular Forms of Russian Names]. Moscow: Librokom.

Tolstoy, L. N. (1980). Neskolko slov po povodu knigi «Voina i mir» [Some Words about the Novel “War and Peace”]. In: Tolstoy, L. N. Collected Works (Vol. 6, pp. 356–366). Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura.

Tolstoy, S. L. (1939). Ob otrazhenii zhizni v “Anne Kareninoy” [On the Reflection of Life in “Anna Karenina”]. Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 37–38, 566–590.

Tupikov, N. M. (Ed.). (2004). Slovar drevnerusskih lichnykh sobstvennykh imen [A Dictionary of Old Russian Personal Names]. M: Russkiy Put.

Ufolog.RU. Retrieved from http://www.ufolog.ru/names

Veselovskiy, S. B. (1974). Onomastikon [Onomasticon]. Moscow: Nauka.

Zhuravlev, A. P. (1981). Zvuk i smysl [Sound and Meaning]. Moscow: Prosveschenye.