AN ATTEMPT OF AN A POSTERIORI APPROACH TO DETERMINING THE COMPOSITION OF THE POETIC CANON

An attempt is made to quantify the composition of the fi nite subset of Russian poetic texts that would be considered as a “poetic canon” (standard, prototype). It is proposed to
consider the number of collections (of the genre of anthologies) in the table of contents of which the text is contained as a measure of the canonicity of this text. 
Two “top lists” are given:
(1) The 25 most canonical texts of the 18–20th centuries (from corpus K1) and
(2) The 25 most canonical texts of the second half of the 20th century (from corpus K2).
The quantitative approach (measuring the use of word forms in poetry and prose) allows us to identify lexico-grammatical markers of “poetic character”, “prosaic character”, “archaic character” and “innovativeness”. The result of the application is clearly represented by tables (3–6) illustrating the extreme values of the corresponding quantitative parameters. Сorpora K1 and K2 can be compared with K3 (equivalent to Uppsala corpus).
Comparing the corpora K2 and K3, we get the lists:
3. poetisms;
(3a) relative in descending order of poetic character (navek [forever], pred [before], sred’ [among], dykhan’e [breath], rukoyu [by hand]...);
(3b, according to K1) and (3v, according to K2) extreme (according to K1 and K2) in descending order of frequency; (3b: ochei [of eyes], pevets [singer], venets [crown]...); (3v: nebosvod [firmament], bredu [I’m wandering] ...);
4. prosaisms;
(4a) relative in descending order of prosaic character (naprimer [for example], menee [less than], ochered’ [queue], chisle [in the number]...);
(4b) extreme in descending order of frequency (SSSR [USSR], usloviyakh [in the conditions], naibolee [most<ly>], nekotorye [some]...).
Comparing K1 and K2, we get the lists:
5. poetic archaisms;
(5a) relative in descending order of archaic character (kipit [is boiling], nivy [fi elds], rokovoi [fatal], vzor [gaze]...);
(5b) extreme (which are not in K3) in descending order of frequency (pevets [singer], venets [crown], dushoyu [with the soul], zhrebii [lot]...);
(5v) extreme (which are not in either K3 or K2) in descending order of frequency (ochei [of the eyes], brega [of the coast], dol [lowland], volshebnyi [magic]...);
6. poetic innovations;
(6a) relative in descending order of novelty (ibo [because], samo [itself], smog [was able to], nomer [number]...);
(6b) extreme (from K3) in descending order of frequency (imenno [namely], SSSR [USSR], sluchae [in the case], usloviyakh [in the conditions]...);
(6v) extreme (from K2) in descending order of frequency (amin’ [amen], merkoi [with the measure], proshchayus’ [I say goodbye], skul’ptor [sculptor]...).