Features of a parable in L.N. Tolstoy's story "What Men Live By": a linguostylistic analysis in terms of genre embodiment
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-4-64-70
The article is devoted to the consideration of the genre originality of L.N. Tolstoy's short story "What men live by". The study revealed that the story contains the features of a parable. Tolstoy creatively reworks this genre in his work. The title has a didactic character, contains a hidden imperative, which gives the text a touch of journalism. In order to concretize the idea, the author of the story uses epigraphs – biblical prescriptions that complement each other in content. They are instructive, imperative and evaluative in nature. Epigraphs become peculiar theses, which are confirmed by the content of the main text, which gives it the features of deductive reasoning inherent in the scientific style. In the course of the research, it was found out that Tolstoy's parable generates not one, as in a traditional parable, but a complex of interrelated ideas. The content of the story generally corresponds to the prototypical discourse of the parable. The specificity lies in the fact that Leo Tolstoy's story includes several stories, each of which, on the one hand, is completed, on the other hand, is connected with the other and participates in the formation of a common idea. It is proved that all the ideas of the story are explicated, there are no conditions for the formation of a subtext. The conceptual sphere of the story is objectified by Mikhail's explanations, which form conceptual chains: three questions: what is in people, what is not given to people, what people are alive for ‒ the word of God: it manifests itself in events – a smile (gaining knowledge) – the answer to the question: there is love in people, they are not given to know what they need for their bodies, people are alive with love. The lexicon and grammar of the story correspond to the standards of the parable. The emphasis is on verbs, among which the regular forms of the present descriptive tense are used, colloquial vocabulary is used. The text of the story repeatedly uses key phrases that are imperative and normative in nature, and predictive signs endowed with sacred meaning. It is concluded that Tolstoy's parable takes on a hybrid form, including stylistic features of scholarship and journalism.
Keywords: narrative, genre, short story, parable, prototype, conceptosphere
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Issue: 4, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Pages: 64 — 70
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