Plot-'Action' and Plot-'Event' in Belarusian Literature of the 19th Century ('The Aeneid on the Wrong Side and Taras on Parnassus')

Abstract

The subject of the present study is the language of the first Belarusian poems – 'The Aeneid on the Wrong Side' and 'Taras on Parnassus' as well as the process of creating a national plot in new Belarusian literature in the 19th century. The cause of the evident plot deformation is found in the significant category shift which occurred in the very essence of the poem’s plot system. The 'ready' plot of 'The Aeneid on the Wrong Side' is all of a sudden broken by specific phenomena substantially changing the plot model, which seemed to be absolutely rigid and unchangeable. This way an alternative structure is formed which is to be treated at this stage of the literary evolution as an embryo of a new plot type – 'non-ready'. The poem 'Taras on Parnassus' brought Belarusian professional literature on a complex track of plot emancipation, having modeled it and having placed an absolutely new plot, which seems significant in the national and cultural context, in the position of a traditional rigid plot. The examples of sense condensation of plot units, functional homonymy and inversion as well as author’s conscious communicative positioning are analysed in the article as markers of gradual shifting of the plots of 'The Aeneid on the Wrong Side' and 'Taras on Parnassus' from their rigid models.