Traditore di nome e di fatto: il personaggio di Iuduška nel romanzo I signori Golovlëv di Mihail Saltykov-Ŝedrin

Abstract

The character of Juduška, the protagonist of The Golovlyov Family (1880), a novel by Russian writer Saltykov-Ŝedrin, is an interesting example of renaming. Juduška is not, in fact, only a nickname (made up of the name Juda, Judah, and the term duška, ‘pleasant, gentle person’), tainted by suggestions of duplicity, deception and betrayal; it almost immediately becomes the name that designates his identity. Juduška conceals the original Porfirij, a solemn, royal pre-name, an allusion to the colour purple, an alienating name, and is completed by a second epithet, krovopivuška, ‘leech’. This paper aims to investigate the functional relations between the names of Porfirij-Juduška, his actions and his destiny in the microcosm he represents.