Amplification in Hymnography and "Flowery Style": To the Question of Liturgical Sources

The paper’s objective is poetical and source study research of “flowery style” writings that were common in the Orthodox East literature of XII–XV cent., while also historical review of amplification as one of this style major literary devices. The work’s relevancy is in limited coverage of literary sources for many medieval writings, and lack of researches on hymnography as a basic literary source for “flowery style”. The methods used are: comparison while surveying historical development of a literary trope; juxtaposition in source study analysis of the selected writings; calculation and linguistic analysis while examining syntactic features of amplification periods in the writings; partial hermeneutic analysis of sermons and saints’ lives. Conclusions. Amplification is a major literary trope of “flowery style”, whereas antithesis, repetition, anaphora, epiphora and homeoteleuton are just components of amplification. The source for this important trope is medieval hymnography naturally related to amplification that aims to prolong liturgy and concentrate believers’ thoughts on evangelical stories as long as possible. In this capacity, amplification serves a primary ascetic task of liturgy; listening to it becomes a peculiar exercise of self-perfection, attention and continuous praying. This trope is most fully disclosed in the genre of akathist that dictates specific syntactic constructions to amplification periods of saints’ lives literature. These constructions features, their number, “light” and other symbolism types are studied on the example of various late medieval Orthodox East preachers’ and hagiographers’ writings.