The category of gender in personification: figurative names of death in Russian literature

The paper develops the ideas contained in the pioneering article by Y.I. Gin “The Poetics of Gender”. Specifically, the match and mismatch of gender and sex of the personifying entity and the personificator are analyzed. In this regard, the cases of death personification in the XIX-XX centuries’ Russian prose and poetry are investigated: semantic groups of death personificators are established. Consideration of the main semantic groups shows that the ratio of the words of feminine and masculine gender varies. While it may be generally concluded that a personified death appears in Russian literature as a female character, some groups contain a fairly large number of masculine names. These groups of names include designations associated with masculine roles of the society - “militant” and “combative” roles: a knight, a gunner, a soldier, occupations associated with hunting and killing: a hunter, a butcher, a hangman, the name horseman is associated with the Biblical context. In those classes, where feminine names dominate, there are also some names of masculine gender, e. g. man, old man, father. Their use is marked and is felt as a standing contrast to the existing tradition. During the time period in focus the evolution of the class of death personificators is observed. The class is expanded by various names of occupations. The image of death progressively acquires modem features in poetry of the late twentieth century. The material was collected with the use of the Russian National Corpus.