Paramonova M.K. Gabriel Buzhinsky's Funeral Oration for Boris Sheremetyev From the Point of View of the 'Service of the Country' Idea in the First Quarter of the XVIIIth Century

Abstract: The subject of the research is the funeral oration said by Gabriel Buzhinsky for the death of the Field Marshal Boris Sheremetyev. It is an interesting and understudied achievement of oratory prose of the first quarter of the XVIIIth century. The funeral of Boris Sheremetyev and the funeral oration devoted to him vividly demonstrate the process of developing the positive image of the 'Country's Son' in the Russian social thought of the early XVIIIth century. The image was directly associated with the idea of the 'service of the country' which was actively developed by writers, orators and Peter the First himself during that time period. Honourable burial of the Field Marshal and funeral oration filled with th eulogistic and civic pathos were tools for creating new axiology of the society: Boris Sheremetyev's will to be buried next to his son's grave in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra was sacrificed for the sake of the imperor's intention to develop new values and to create grounds for funeral rites of military brass. In her research Paramonova has used the comparative historical and historical genetic research methods as well as the philological analysis of literary texts. Gabriel Buzhinsky's oratory prose is understudied in Russian literary studies. Never before The Speech for the Funeral of the Field Marshal Boris Sheremetyev has been a matter of individual analysis, thus this text is being analyzed in terms of the cultural, literary and social environments of that epoch for the first time in the academic literature. The analysis of Gabriel Buzhinsky's Funeral Oration for Boris Sheremetyev demonstrates the break point in the oratory prose of the XVIIIth century. Rhetoric religious text written by a preaching monk served secular purposes and developed actual political and social ideas. 

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