PERIPHRASE IN THE 18th CENTURY RUSSIAN POETRY

The article discusses one of the largest categories of the 18th century poetic phraseology — the periphrases, which are structurally organized and semantically formed descriptiveexpressions of poetic language, characterized by separability, nominative function, and expressiveness. Periphrase makes it possible to evaluate the author’s individuality, the originality of his mind, the author’s creativity, personal qualities, intellectual abilities, the level of education, to understand his subjective attitude to the described phenomenon, the ability to creatively describe the world around and inside him. Periphrases may be considered as markers of the idiostyles of 18th century poets. The poetry of the 18th century served as a kind of “creative laboratory” and, at the same time, a “repository” of the results of poetic improvisation, where paraphrases were created. Among the poetic periphrases of the 18th century, family or genealogical periphrases deserve great attention — periphrases that designate a person through consanguinity, through his/her position in the system of family relations. Usually they are organized according to the structural-semantic model “anthroponymic component (in the form of a possessive adjective / noun in the genitive case) + a nuclear component — a kinship term (daughter, son, grandson, etc.) or lexical units branch, blood, root, branch, tribe, off spring, etc.”. At the same time, the genealogical phraseological model may include not only the names of real historical persons, but also mythonyms. Genealogical periphrases in a poetic text are often explicated, i.e. acquire new components that contribute to the actualization, clarifi cation of the periphrastic name and, consequently, the enhancement of their expression.