“Look At Me, What a Dandy I Am!”: on the Semantic Content of the Image of Lyubim Tortsov in the Play By A. N. Ostrovsky “Poverty Is No Vice”

This article focuses on Lyubim Karpych Tortsov, a Russian frant (translit.) – dandy (transl.)a member of the merchant class, one of the most important characters in A. N. Ostrovsky's play “Poverty Is No Vice”. The aim of the article is to examine specifics of the key lexeme frant through the prism of semantics, as well as culture and history, identified in lexicographic and literary sources of the 19th–21st centuries and in Ostrovsky's early works. The primary objective is to demonstrate the connection between the word frant as a key and supporting self-nomination of the character and the author's image of Lyubim Karpych Tortsov. To achieve this goal and solve this problem, an appropriate set of methods is used for semasiological (from nomination to character) and onomasiological (from character to nomination) analysis of the lexeme frant. Furthermore, we employ methods of analyzing scientific, dictionary, and literary sources, including a search and selective methods, as well as descriptive, comparative, and interpretive methods of analyzing the obtained and selected textual, semantic, and etymological data, as well as elements of modeling and component analysis.

The study revealed that, in developing the character of Lyubim Karpych Tortsov, Ostrovsky, in one way or another, draws on the full range of meanings of the lexeme frant, including those related to its etymology, cultural, historical, and other specific features. The play also realizes the individual authorial semantics of the word frant: signs of intra-word antonymy emerge, and ironic connotations become more vivid. These factors enabled the playwright to embody in the character of Lyubim Tortsov the “tragi-comic type of a Russian person”.