Rhetorical question as a figure of speech in the poetry of Feofan Prokopovich

The article examines the role of rhetorical questions in the poetic works of Feofan Prokopovich. The study is based on the analysis of various poetic works of Feofan Prokopovich, with “Epinikion” being the most significant one. The relevance of the work is explained by the insufficient study of rhetorical question as a figure of speech in the context of poetic syntax and diachronic rhetoric. The paper offers a brief excursion into the history of studying the personality of Feofan Prokopovich and highlights the important connection between the author’s rhetorical and poetic views, with a particular focus on the specifics of interrogative constructions in the context of poetic creativity compared with questions used in everyday speech. The article contains statistical data related to the use of rhetorical questions by eighteenth-century poets and analyzes the functionality of rhetorical questions in the poetic works of Feofan Prokopovich, their role in creating the emotional expressiveness of texts, and the specifics of their use both in the text of “Epinikion” and other lesser-known poems. The study resulted in identifying general trends in using rhetorical questions in poetic works by Feofan Prokopovich, as well as defining and clarifying potential influence on the subsequent poetic and rhetorical works of later authors.