Dovgy Olga Lvovna – Doctor in Philology, Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Literary and Art Criticism and Publicism, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University
The article, written on the material of the emblematic dilogy by A. Makhov (Emblematics: Macrocosm, 2014, Emblematics: Microcosm, 2024), is devoted to the methods of depicting a tyrant in emblematics. The emblematic approach to the world of things is distinguished by pragmatism; the didactic function is often the main one. As Makhov shows, a tyrant, like any person or thing, is not a final aim for emblematists, but a didactic means. The set of motifs that form the topic of a tyrant – and more broadly, a ruler in general – does not pretend to be original, in general not deviating from the set of general moral truths. The originality of emblematic solutions arises at the level of HOW. The uniqueness of Makhov’s vision lies in the principles of analysis of the mechanism of expression of emblematic pragmatism: in the selection of material, unexpected focusing, scrupulous study of the system of artistic means. The poetic devices of emblematics (metaphorical codes, paradoxes, a set of ethos, methods of argumentation), first systematically described by Makhov, are universal. When applied to the tyrannical topic, Makhov’s approach allowed us to see the diversity of ways of expressing moral “lessons for kings”, different ways of representing the opposition of a cruel and fair ruler in emblematics.
A. Makhov; emblematic dilogy; didactic function of an emblem; tyrant; ruler; sovereign.