The Wolf Motif in the Early Stories of M. A. Sholokhov: Folklore Traditions and the Author’s Model of the World

Aim. To consider the symbolic motif of the wolf as the basis for creating an artistic model of the world in M. Sholokhov’s early stories.
Methodology. The article uses the procedures of motive and contextual analysis, the method of linguocultural description of mythologemes, analysis of the spatiotemporal organization of the text, and the method of keyword analysis to identify the symbolism of the wolf image.
Results. The image of the wolf as a continuous symbolic motif of M. Sholokhov's “Tales from the Don” is analyzed. The main parameters of the motive organization of the stories under consideration are characterized: the ambivalence of the image of the wolf which reveals its contradictory nature; anthropomorphization of the image of a wolf presented in the use of the psychological parallelism technique when comparing the natural and human characteristics of the depicted; the structure of the chronotope is described as a condition for the implementation of the author's intention; thematic vectors of the development of the wolf motif are highlighted, the main ones being the themes of revenge and tragic confrontation in the depiction of the characters’ personalities.
Research implications. The paper substantiates the methodology of motive analysis for identifying the symbolic meanings of mythologemes in the relationship between folklore tradition and the author’s world modeling.

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