Nevstrueva A. The Poetics of Name in Thomas Hardy's Creative Work (Novels of Character and Environmеnt)

The object of the research is the novels of character and environment by Thomas Hardy (Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd, Return of the Native, Mayor of Casterbridge, Woodlanders, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude The Obscure). The objective of the research is the highlighting of the peculiarities of poetics and functioning of proper names in Hardian works; revealing of correlation of proper names in the novels of character and the environment with the literary background of the epoch. The methodology of the research is based on the method of system analysis for analytical study of scientific sources. Conceptual theses of Lotman's semiotic theory are used for studying proper name as a sign; principles of the analysis of proper names and character structure correlation. The presented research focuses on the poetics of names in the creative work by Thomas Hardy - a famous English writer at the turn of the 19-20th centuries - in the context of the epistemological crisis which occurred at that time. The investigation of anthroponyms in the Novels of Character and Environment is carried out on the basis of semiotics and hermeneutics. The main stress in the Hardian Studies is given to the semantic codes ciphered in the names of characters. These semantic codes display the specificity of the writer's conceptosphere. The results of the research testify to the uniqueness of the philosophic and aesthetic views of the writer, his involvement in the cultural process of the "boundary of the centuries". Field of application: materials and results of the research can be used for practical and lecture courses on the history of foreign literature, for seminars on the English literature history, on literary onomastics.