Similes in Narrator’s and Characters’ Speech as Traditional Elements of Epic Style (on the Material of Virgil’s “Aeneid”)

The article deals with the peculiarities of the functioning of similes in narrator’s and characters’ speech in Virgil’s “Aeneid.” The author of the article demonstrates the relation between the nature of the distribution of similes and the subject of speech, the content of the text and the development of the plot on the basis of quantitative data. As the analysis shows, similes in the narrator’s speech serve to describe and characterize heroes, people, gods, chthonic creatures and phenomena. Similes in the characters’ speech are used in communication with the shadows of the dead, prophetic dreams, prophecies, descriptions of chthonic creatures, as well as for characterizing actions of the opposing sides and individual heroes in the episode of the fall of Troy. The conclusion is that the distribution of similes in the text of the “Aeneid” is not accidental and follows the previous epic tradition: similes prevail in those parts and episodes of the poem in which the description of battles and duels is given, and they are concentrated in the speech of the narrator, in the speech of the characters they are significantly fewer. While preserving the features of continuity with the previous tradition, Virgil’s poem also distinguishes by its fundamental novelty in the creative selection and arrangement of aesthetic speech elements.