Formation of the concept of beauty in the words with the Proto-Slavic root *lěp-, based on the material of ancient Russian written records

Abstract

Old Russian texts provide an opportunity to study the early state of the Russian vocabulary. The vocabulary structure of the Old Russian texts included the words of the Proto-Slavic language, a large number of calques and artificially created words. The absence of written records of the Proto-Slavic language, in which its vocabulary would be recorded, deprives us of the primary source of the meanings of such words. The Proto-Slavic root *lěp- had an undivided meaning. Undivided meaning of the root *lěp- is a potential problem in the interpretation of the words with this root used in ancient Russian texts. Another problem in the lexical-semantic study of words in the Old Russian texts is that words being semantic calques received additional meanings under the influence of Greek. In this regard the paper shows the formation of the concept of beauty in words with the root *lěp- used in ancient Russian texts. The purpose of this article is to study the evolution of the concept of beauty in the words with the Proto-Slavic root *lěp-. The article provides a comparative analysis of lexical meanings of the words with the root *lěp- containing the concept of beauty (used in ancient Russian texts) with their Greek equivalents. Such words are contained in ancient Russian written records: “The Life of St. Andrew the Fool”, “The Chronicle” by John Malalas, “The Chronicle” by George Amartol, “History of the Jewish War” by Josephus Flavius, Christianopolis (Acts and Epistles of the Apostles), Uspensky Сollection of XII–XIII centuries, etc.