The Semiotics of a Genre: Gothic Canon in the Ironic Mode

The article is devoted to the semiotics of the gothic story genre in its ironic transformation in Russian classic literature, in particular, in the compositional and axiological transformations found in “The Queen of Spades” by A. Pushkin. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest in understanding the nature of aesthetic semiosis, in the set of stable features of a certain genre, the conditions for their changes and demand in specific historical eras. The aim of the article is to analyze the semiotic parameters of the ironic mode that transforms the gothic tradition in A. Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades”, but not affecting the value orientation of the protagonist. Research methods include historical, typological and comparative methods, as well as the method of philological interpretation and structural and semiotic analysis. The study identified semiotic components that mark not only the adaptation of gothic symbols and the whole genre of the gothic story in the first third of the 19th century to the tradition of Russian literature, but also the author’s intention of the inapplicability of a rational life strategy in the Russian national worldview. Transformations affect the traditional requirements for the space and time of the literary world, for the system of characters, for the motivation of their actions. At the same time, if the first two aspects appear in Pushkin in an ironic modus, largely successive to romantic irony, then the motivation for Hermann’s actions is resolved within the framework of the absolutization of the character’s value orientations: the hero’s actions are interpreted through stable values that characterize the national axiosphere. The author focuses not on the mysterious and extraordinary, but on the duality that permeates all levels of the literary world - from the motivation of the character’s actions to the explanation of the collapse of his hopes. Behind strong passions is the motivation of the actions and experiences of the hero, expressing the real nature of what is happening, which, nevertheless, does not prevent the realization of the motive of the case, which acquires the quality of an aesthetic sign in a literary text.