Authorial dialogue in Iris Murdoch’s “The Sea, the Sea”

В статье рассматривается роль авторского диалога в философско-психологическом романе Айрис Мёрдок «Море, море» (Iris Murdoch “The Sea, the Sea”, 1978) в раскрытии авторского замысла в целом и выявлении аспектов диалогичности художественного текста. На сегодняшний день отсутствуют лингвистические исследования данного популярного романа, который представляет прекрасный образец философско-психологического произведения литературы ХХ века и отражает актуальные тенденции работы с художественным словом, что обусловливает актуальность и научную новизну работы. Авторы статьи на материале романа А. Мёрдок анализируют диалогические маркеры речевого взаимодействия, опираясь на теорию, разработанную в исследовании Т. Ф. Плехановой, посвященную анализу художественного текста как дискурса в его диалогическом измерении, предлагают классификацию диалогических маркеров авторско-читательского взаимодействия, выявляют языковые средства, оформляющие непосредственный диалогический контакт, проводят подробный лингвостилистический анализ наиболее интересных фрагментов речевого взаимодействия, делают выводы об их роли в реализации авторского замысла. The article discusses the role of the authorial dialogue in the philosophical and psychological novel by Iris Murdoch “The Sea, the Sea” in revealing the authorial intent, namely aspects of the dialogic character of a literary text. The popular novel by Iris Murdoch is a perfect specimen of philosophical and psychological fiction of the twentieth century reflecting up-to-date literary trends; however, it has not undergone any thorough linguistic analysis so far. This fact determines the topicality and novelty of the research conducted. The authors investigate dialogical markers of speech interaction based on the theory devoted to the analysis of a literary text as a discourse in its dialogical dimension developed by T. F. Plekhanova. Based on the results of the Plekhanova research, the authors of the article offer a classification of dialogical markers of author-reader interaction; identify linguistic means that form direct dialogical contact, conduct a detailed linguistic and stylistic analysis of the most interesting fragments of speech interaction, make conclusions about their role in the implementation of the authorial intent.

The Art of Moving

“The Art of Moving” turns to an eighteenth-century culture of the sentiments, traditionally seen in strong contrast to a Renaissance culture of the passions. I argue instead that, from the standpoint of rhetoric, the discourses on affectivity from 1500 to 1800 constitute parts of a single, unfolding process. The chapter traces the influence of rhetoric on Shaftesbury, Hume, and Smith, arguing that empiricist models of the mind are built on a rhetorical concern with vivid, forceful, and passionate imagery, and that such models effectively introject a rhetorical scene into the mind. The chapter then turns to Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa—traditionally the exemplary instance of a new, “psychological” fiction—in order to argue that the novel’s psychology is in fact an externalist, rhetorical one that resists any clear distinction between character-driven and plot-driven fictions. Richardson’s novel opens up a series of concerns that reach deep into the material of both this chapter and the previous one: about post-Hobbesian accounts of the will as determined by passions; about circumstantial narrative as a means of not just representing but also exploiting that determination; about empiricism collapsing into a Gorgian rhetoric in which the very effort to promote an ethics of natural sentiment introduces a quasi-mechanistic model of the human being. In its final pages, the chapter turns to Smith’s lectures on rhetoric and Giambattista Vico’s New Science to argue that, between 1600 and 1800, literary history was becoming legible as the material of a cultural history of the passions.

POETICS OF DESIRE IN D.H. LAWRENCE’S SHORTER FICTION

Desire is a specific subject of research in many areas, including literary studies and text analysis. The representation of desire in fiction is an inseparable part of the sub-genre of psychological prose; its interpretation by readers and scholars requires an interdisciplinary approach and relies on psychoanalytic theories and terminology for elucidation. Shorter psychological fiction – novellas and short stories – depend on the authors’ mastery of language use, while the formal textual length is limited. Therefore, the study of desire encoded in a short fictional piece is both difficult due to laconism and suggestiveness, and fruitful as a revelation of most subtle nuances of human nature through the examination of artistic discourse. D.H. Lawrence’s novellas and short stories articulate desire as the unconscious wish to obtain the object of love. It is the merit of the writer’s art to employ various artistic means that may serve as the manifest content. Interpreting imagery and symbolism, bodily consciousness and characters’ “syncopated” dialogues, opens up such aspects of a textual embodiment of desire as its elusiveness, impossibility to verbalize and often its “forbidden” nature. Instead, the Ragachewskaya Marina writer resorts to heavy suggestiveness, gaps and silences to be filled with the reader’s intuitive or professional knowledge, meaning-charged adjectives, metaphors and analytical intrusions. Examples from a selection of D.H. Lawrence’s short fictional works reveal defense mechanisms that balance the fulfilment of desire. The mastery of D.H. Lawrence’s shorter fiction rests on the skill to reveal the unnamable, to show the inner conflict working through desire fulfilment, to bring to consciousness the shame, guilt and pleasure irrespective of moral judgment.

LEXICO-STYLISTIC MEANS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CRISIS REPRESENTATION (BY CECILIA AHERN’S NOVEL THE TIME OF MY LIFE)

The article deals with the phenomenon of psychological crisis and its representation in psychological fiction. The work of the modern English novelist Cecilia Ahern The Time of my Life was chosen for the analysis. The concept of psychological crisis is viewed through the prism of the protagonist’s reaction to the separation as a kind of a personal loss. The research of the individual author style is focused on the set of lexical, stylistic and compositional means used to actualize the mentioned above concept in the novel. Personification as a key stylistic means is applied by the writer to create an image of the protagonist’s life. A variety of depicting and characterological details serve to trace the evolution of the personage named Life, in correlation with the changes that occur in the protagonist’s consciousness, in her life perception. Another set of details is used to show different manifestations of the crisis disregard: neglected apartment, unhealthy food, inability to maintain a normal relationship with friends. The use of key words, their repetitions in different contexts alongside with flashbacks and their role in the composition of the novel are studied. The implicit details, symbols and metaphors indicating different stages of psychological crisis overcoming (from refusal and stagnation to acceptance and acting) are also analyzed.

Hamsun, Knut (1859–1952)

Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun’s novels anticipated modernist psychological fiction and influenced a generation of major European figures. Winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize in literature, Hamsun wrote over thirty works in various genres, including both experimental modernist and neorealist novels. In the final decades of his life, Hamsun became a Nazi sympathizer during the German occupation of Norway, which has complicated his literary legacy. Hamsun was born as Knut Pedersen in central Norway in 1859, but moved to the coastal north of the country while very young. He grew up with little formal education, writing his first works of imaginative fiction in the late 1870s. Hamsun made two extended stays in the USA in the 1880s, when he worked on farms and gave lectures about contemporary European and Scandinavian literature.

Psychology and Literature: A Survey of Courses

A survey of interdisciplinary courses in psychology and literature was taken. College and university catalogs from the United States and Canada were scanned to locate both psychology courses that used literary materials and literature courses in which psychological concepts and theories were taught. Instructors of 135 selected courses were mailed a letter requesting additional information about their courses and syllabi. The survey indicated that most of the courses were taught in literature departments. Psychoanalysis was found to be the dominant theoretical orientation, though a few other perspectives were represented. The syllabi were used to compile a reading list of psychological fiction for teaching and for general interest.

La ficción de Juan Ruiz

The art of Juan Ruiz must be understood in the light of the medieval conception of art as facere, a conception that postulates the artistic independence of a work while emphasizing its didactic nature in the use that individuals can make of it following their own personal motivations. The independent artistic form of Ruiz's work is at the same time an autobiographical form, wherein lies its fictional character. The fiction of the Book of Good Love is not to be seen as the fiction of its imaginary adventures but as the psychological fiction of its protagonist, i.e., the literary illusion that this protagonist mistakes for reality. Such an illusion is best exhibited in the central episode of the book, that of don Melón and doña Endrina, Ruiz's own amplified translation of Pamphilus de Amore. The autobiographical form of the book, therefore, should not be seen as a conventional literary device for self-expression but as an ironic portrait of Juan Ruiz, the man, taking for reality what Juan Ruiz, the artist, knows to be only literary fiction. (In Spanish)