Abstract: The article examines legal metaphors and figurative comparisons that allow us to imagine the world of the French aristocracy of the period of the Third Republic in M. Proust's novel. The terms of constitutional, administrative, international public and civil law, as well as banking law as part of business law are identified. The author examines Marcel's imaginative understanding of high society through legal concepts. The subject of the study is the specific legal terms of the text. The purpose of this work is to analyze the layers of the artwork, allowing us to present the features of the world of French aristocrats in a republican environment. The article uses methods of semantic, linguistic-stylistic analysis and linguistic commenting. It is shown that the aristocrats' rejection of the Republic is expressed, among other things, through their rejection of the new legal system, and through an ironic attitude towards its institutions. On the contrary, reverence for the cultural stratum of the irrevocably departed period of absolute monarchy is one of the distinctive characteristics of the Guermantes, people of their close social circle and even their servants. Legal terms contrasting these two epochs also introduce a complex and ambiguous antithesis, important for M. Proust's texts as a whole, between what is and what seems. The distrust of the aristocrats of the period of the Third Republic to the new legal reality turns out to be one of the distinctive features that allow them to maintain their clannishness, despite the apparent democracy in choosing a circle of communication and openness to change.

Abstract: The article analyzes microstructural (metaphor and figurative comparison) and macrostructural (allusion) stylistic figures, including legal vocabulary, through which the author ironically describes both the essence and the form of social relations, primarily between representatives of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Legal terms from the field of criminal procedure, as well as administrative, constitutional, criminal, civil and commercial law used as a figurative part of these figures were selected as the object of the study. Traditionally, terms are divided into commonly used, i.e. used in everyday life; terms used in many branches of knowledge, not only in jurisprudence, but, say, also in logic, and special legal terms that indicate phenomena peculiar to law. In this work we use the methods of lexical, semantic and stylistic analysis. For the analysis of stylistic figures, we turn to the classification of J. Molyneux, who divides them into macrostructural (not having any pronounced features; not always noticeable in the text and may not be understood: in our case, this is an allusion to the situation from constitutional law) and microstructural (immediately noticeable in the text; used to create them vocabulary cannot be replaced by another; they are understood unambiguously; in our case, these are metaphors and figurative comparisons). Through the use of these figures, the author's irony is expressed at all levels: both in describing the social relations of aristocrats and bourgeois among their own kind, and in their interaction with each other. In the contexts under consideration, the "sublime" vocabulary also sometimes coexists with the vocabulary of a more "low" style, which allows you to create a contrast between how certain social relations are seen by the characters and what they really are.