The concept of “province” in Russian literature of the XIX century: semantic field of psychological and existential feelings

The word “province” is associated with a variety of meanings, starting from the literal (the territory of the state) and ending with metaphorical (stagnation, backwardness, lack of education, etc.). These meanings were formed around the “province” and accumulated in the Russian speech consciousness mainly through the efforts of fiction of the XIX century. Thus, from a lexeme with a specific direct meaning, the word “province” was transformed into an abstract concept, concept and myth. This study is an attempt to reconstruct, describe and systematize all meanings based on the materials of the “National Corpus of the Russian Language”. The focus of the article is only those meanings that are associated with psychological or existential states.Among the mentions of the word “province” and its derivatives, 108 cases were identified in which the context of describing feelings was contained. All cases have been studied. The analysis resulted in 13 meanings reflecting the idea of the province in terms of psychological and existential states: longing/boredom; uncertainty, dependence; loss of self and abilities; fear/horror/anxiety; shame; sadness/sadness; despair; loneliness; madness; apathy; lack of freedom; peace; freedom. It turned out that in the literature of the XIX century, mainly negative connotations accumulate around the concept of “province”. Few positive meanings (peace, freedom) refer to the sentimentalist tradition, appear during the decline of the “noble nests” and Slavophile aspirations to purify the idea of the Russian province from negative meanings. Negative psychological or existential ones are caused by: a) the province’s lack of its own identity and, as a result, self-assessment from the position of the Other (uncertainty, dependence on authorities and the “metropolitan”, fear/ horror/anxiety, shame); b) the direct immersion of provintsials in an eventless provintsial life (longing/boredom, sadness/sadness, despair, loneliness, apathy, lack of freedom, insanity, loss of oneself and one’s abilities, motives for sleep and death).

province, provintsiality, concept, National Corpus of the Russian Language, Russian literature of the 19th century