Evangelical intertextual connections in A. S. Pushkin’s novel "The Captain’s Daughter"

The article examines the evangelical intertextual connections, including quotations and allusions. The material for the study was A. S. Pushkin’s final prose work, i.e., "The Captain’s Daughter", with special emphasis on Masha Mironova’s first and second meetings with the empress. The study aims to identify the types of intertextual connections with the Gospel, their functions as well as precedent text transformations. We used structural semantic, comparative, and descriptive methods to analyse the linguistic material. It is shown that the linguistic fabric of the text of the novel includes a quotation and allusions. The quotation undergoes formal changes; however, it retains its original, evangelical meaning and symbolises the Divine law. Allusions are actualised through lexical repetition as well as the reproduction of the syntactic structure of the precedent text and the phonetic expressive means of alliteration. Through allusions, the writer, simultaneously referring to the texts of the four Gospels, presents the entire story of the myrrh-bearing women meeting the Risen Christ. The analysed references in "The Captain’s Daughter" perform various functions. With their help, A. S. Pushkin describes the characters, deepens the narrative, plays with the text. However, first of all, through intertextual connections with the Gospel, the writer leads the reader to Christ. The identified precedent text transformations are very diverse. They include lexical substitutions, linguistic contamination, changes of the grammatical categories of the noun, verb, and participle, changes of the part of speech of words, punctuation variation. By introducing references to the Four Gospels into the text of the first and second meetings of Marya Mironova with the empress, Pushkin particularly emphasises the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John. The study is comprehensive and includes linguistic, cultural, and literary approaches, which contributes to a deeper analysis of the text.