BIBLICAL JOB AS A PRECEDENT NAME IN THE RECEPTION OF VICTOR HUGO

The subject of this article is the name of the hero of the biblical Book of Job in the works of Victor Hugo, considered in the context of the theory of precedent phenomena, which integrates aspects of the humanities — linguistics, literary studies, and cultural studies. The aim of the article is to analyze the expressive means used by Victor Hugo to introduce the name Job into artistic discourse, to identify the main differential features in the contexts of usage of this anthroponym, and to determine its interrelation with other precedent phenomena—the biblical text and precedent situations. The study applies a functional method combined with contextual and interpretative text analysis. The relevance of the research lies in the fact that the problem of “religion and philological sciences” is gaining significance today as one of the promising directions in the humanities. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that, to our knowledge, the functioning of the name Job in the creative heritage of Victor Hugo has not yet been examined, particularly by Ukrainian philologists. The research results show that the image of Job in Victor Hugo’s literary legacy is characterized by rich semantic content and frequent usage (29 mentions of the name and 7 references to the Book of Job were identified). In accordance with Romantic aesthetics, Job becomes for Hugo a symbol of suffering, and suffering emerges as the dominant differential feature of this precedent name, explicated through such attributes as sores, wounds, and pus, drawn from the biblical text that recounts his severe trials. In Hugo’s artistic worldview, the precedent name Job carries a special semantic load that includes both the universally recognized meaning of suffering and individual, author-specific connotations characteristic of the writer’s idiostyle, such as heroism, resilience, and courage. These qualities form the basis for another differential feature — fortitude. At the same time, Job in Hugo’s reception is a real person, a genius, a first-rate intellect, and a driving force of civilization, which allows genius to be considered another of his differential features. Hugo, possessing vast erudition and an exceptionally rich, almost all-encompassing vocabulary, introduces the biblical sufferer into artistic discourse through a variety of stylistic devices: metaphor and simile, quotation and reminiscence, antithesis and analogy. The article concludes that the presentation of the Book of Job and the name of its hero in Victor Hugo’s artistic and socio-publicistic discourse is marked by national-cultural and personal characteristics, reflects the author’s worldview, cognitive experience, and linguistic competence, and serves as evidence of the high talent of the classic of French literature. Prospects for further research include the continued exploration of the image of Job as a cultural concept in world literature.