scholarly journals The Logical Basis of a Literary Text, or What Does Porfiry Petrovich Hide in F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”?

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Valentina E. Vetlovskaya

<p>The article explores the role of logical connections in an epic text. It is these connections, according to the author of the article, that connect the individual components of the narrative (motifs, complexes of motifs) and make up in the reader&rsquo;s perception for the missing elements. The reticence and failures to mention, common in fiction, appear in the narrative for various reasons. Sometimes due to the aesthetic principles of the writer who prefers ambiguity to a completed statement depriving readers of the opportunity to finish thinking over a vague idea. And sometimes, due to the author&rsquo;s conviction that there is no need to explain the idea implied by what has been earlier said. But it also happens that the omissions in the narrative are engendered by the requirements for the presentation of a chosen topic, for example in crime fiction. But these reasons may go together as it occurs in Crime and Punishment. These ideas are illustrated by the analysis of one of the themes of the novel Crime and Punishment.</p>

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Zhang Chengdong ◽  

In traditional Russian literature, the motif of losing oneself regularly serves as the motivation for spiritual transformation and search for salvation of the character, promoting the plot of a literary text and creating new types of characters. However, it is not difficult to notice the transformation in the utilization and implementation of this motif in the plot composition of postmodern texts based on the principle of uncertainty and randomness, which is opposed to the teleology of the classical narrative. The relevance of the topic is due to the insufficiency of research on such changes, especially in the postmodern works by Viktor Pelevin. Though there have been several observations on Pelevin’s textual structure, the role of motifs in organizing and constructing the plot remains outside the scope of researchers’ attention. This article aims to reveal the role and specifics of the motif “the loss of oneself” as a plot-forming component in the novel Generation “P” by V. O. Pelevin. Based on the contemporary motif theory, it particularly pays attention to the context of allomotifs and events associated with the motifeme of losing oneself, following A. Dundes, who understands the motifeme as the basic unit in the paradigmatics of the narrative, and allomotifs as its syntagmatic variants. Through analyzing various variations of allomotifs “the loss of oneself” (losing the feeling of eternity, symbolic death, metamorphosis, manipulation, etc.), the paper attempts to reveal constructive components of the narrative structure in this novel, which determined its artistic semantics. Arguing the tragic essence of the individual value orientation on consumerism in the context of the eschatological media mythology, it also finds out that Pelevin constructs the plot as Tatarsky’s rising up the career ladder, accompanied by the loss of personality, the replacement of Homo sapiens by Homo Zappiens. To achieve this purpose, he widely uses different schemes that implement the emic motifeme through various variations of allomotifs. That’s why, the success of the protagonist in the ending does not mean the spiritual salvation, but the totality of submission to the God of money and immersion in the void, where the way out of the new social and mental impasse is impossible not only for the protagonist but also for the novelist himself. Keywords: Victor Pelevin, Generation “P”, motifeme of losing oneself, set of allomotifs, mythopoetics


GeoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Gabellieri

AbstractScholars have been investigating detective stories and crime fiction mostly as literary works reflecting the societies that produced them and the movement from modernism to postmodernism. However, these genres have generally been neglected by literary geographers. In the attempt to fill such an epistemological vacuum, this paper examines and compare the function and importance of geography in both classic and late 20th century detective stories. Arthur Conan Doyle’s and Agatha Christie’s detective stories are compared to Mediterranean noir books by Manuel Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri and Jean Claude Izzo. While space is shown to be at the center of the investigations in the former two authors, the latter rather focus on place, that is space invested by the authors with meaning and feelings of identity and belonging. From this perspective, the article argues that detective investigations have become a narrative medium allowing the readership to explore the writer’s representation/construction of his own territorial context, or place-setting, which functions as a co-protagonist of the novel. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the emerging role of place in some of the later popular crime fiction can be interpreted as the result of writer’s sentiment of belonging and, according to Appadurai’s theory, as a literary and geographical discourse aimed at the production of locality.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Ildar Ch. Safin ◽  
Elena I. Kolosova ◽  
Tatyana A. Gimranova

<p> This article is the verbal lexicon analysis based on the text of the novel "The Big Green Tent" by L. Ulitskaya. The creative manner of the contemporary writer attracts the attention of researchers, her writings describe the emotional experiences of the heroes and also give a generalized image of time full of historical details and features. The language of her stories and short stories is characterized by a special style in the description of time realities. A verb in the text allows the author to express the events and the circumstances that characterize an action in its dynamics due to the fact that verbal categories reflect the real reality in our consciousness. The method of linguistic cultural analysis of verbal lexicon in the novel "The Big Green Tent" made it possible to single out exactly those language units that the writer carefully selects for the creation and interpretation of the era. A special emphasis in the study is made on the creation of an expressive-emotional style of narration using the stylistic capabilities of the Russian verb. The individual author's methods of narration expressiveness creation are singled out: synonymous series, euphemisms, colloquial lexicon, etc. The conducted study and a careful analysis of the selected factual material testifies that, recreating an epoch, the master of the word invariably uses that language arsenal that brightly and fully conveys the color of time. L. Ulitskaya is able to be not only an indifferent witness of the epoch, but also her tenacious observer and interpreter. The analyzed factual material and the main points of this research can be used in the courses on stylistics and linguistic culturology, and also as an illustrative material during the classes on the linguistic analysis of a literary text.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
KATERINA GLADKOVA

The article presents the results of the study of aesthetic function of interrogative utterances in the novel "Waterland" by G. Swift. The methods of component analysis, contextual analysis, and stylistic analysis were used in the research. The author assumes that interrogative utterances play the key role in representing imagery of the novel, facilitating thematical and conceptual unity, forming the chronotope and presentation of the inner world of the narrator. It was also found that interrogative utterances function in expressing emotivity and psychologism of a literary text as well as actualizing implicit senses, e. g. of certain images and episodes by means of such stylistic devices as aposiopesis, parenthesis, repetition, ellipsis and others. In general, the author assumes that in their aesthetic function interrogative utterances serve to convey the individual aesthetic model presented by the author in a literary text.


Author(s):  
Н.Г. Сичинава

Статья посвящена рассмотрению проблемы формирования основ филологического анализа и интерпретации художественного текста на материале новеллы И.А. Бунина «Ворон». Автор обосновывает необходимость интеграции лингвистического, лингвострановедческого и литературоведческого анализа для обеспечения максимально полного восприятия художественного дискурса инофонами. Зависимость понимания художественного текста и получаемого при его чтении эстетического эффекта от глубины восприятия словесно-художественных образов автор продемонстрирует на материале новеллы И.А. Бунина «Ворон». Средствами создания образов в рассказе являются символика имени; прямая или косвенная характеристики; портрет героя; действия и поступки героя; образы-детали; описание психологического состояния героя; изображение внутреннего мира героя через воспоминания; речь. Как показал анализ, в тексте бунинского рассказа значительный лексический пласт образуется за счет прецедентных феноменов. Процесс их декодирования можно рассматривать как важное средство экспликации текстовой информации. Прежде всего, в исследовательский объектив попадают прецедентные имена. Именно через них можно установить ассоциативные связи с теми понятиями-образами, которые были характерны для российского общества описываемой эпохи или русского лингвокультурного сообщества в целом. В раскрытии образов важную роль играют имплицирующие детали, актуализация которых в ряде случаев происходит через комментарии, заранее подготовленные преподавателем. Особый интерес вызывает проблема смыслового восприятия и понимания имени героини новеллы. Декодирование символики имени героини происходит на основе прецедентных текстов. Данная стратегия формирует у студентов способность узнавать, понимать и адекватно интерпретировать смысл художественного теста с интертекстуальными включениями. Кодирование культурной информации, которая впоследствии должна быть разгадана читателем, имеет место при введении в контекст новеллы определенных лексических единиц. Ключевые слова: художественный текст, интерпретация, прецедентный феномен, образ, язык, И.А. Бунин. The article is devoted to the problem of forming the foundations of philological analysis and interpretation of a fiction text based on the material of I. A. Bunin's short story “The Raven”. The author justifies the need to integrate linguistic, linguistic-cultural and literary analysis in order to ensure the fullest possible perception of fiction discourse by foreign speakers. The author demonstrates the dependence of the understanding of a literary text and the aesthetic effect obtained when reading it on the depth of perception of verbal and artistic images based on the material of I. A. Bunin's Novella "the Raven". The means of creating images in the story are: symbolism of the name; direct or indirect characteristics; portrait of the hero; actions and actions of the hero; images-details; description of the psychological state of the hero; image of the inner world of the hero through memories; speech. Explication of the information contained in the text can proceed along the path of decoding precedent phenomena. When using a precedent name, the author appeals to certain concepts-images that were well known to him and his contemporaries, but do not mean anything to the modern reader. Thus, decoding hidden information requires knowledge accumulated in a given linguistic and cultural community or by humanity as a whole. Implying details play an important role in the disclosure of images, which in some cases are updated through comments prepared in advance by the teacher. Of particular interest is the problem of semantic perception and understanding of the name of the heroine of the novel, which contains references to precedent texts. Decoding the symbolism of the heroine's name gives students the ability to recognize, understand and adequately interpret the meaning of an artistic test with intertextual inclusions. The encoding of cultural information, which must later be unraveled by the reader, takes place when certain lexical units are introduced into the context of the novel.


Author(s):  
María Rosa Palazón

There are no a-moral texts, even though amorality may be described by them: an amoral author would not dare into the search of beauty; it depends on a game of faculties that, also, play with the form. A moralizing literary text is not due to a game of author's faculties, but only to the author's conscience. Thus, it rebounds heavy and ugly. An ugly immoral literary text assaults on a redundant and calculated way some moral rules in favor of the "forbidden". Then, it is not a beautiful text. The aesthetic function is the one treating the stimulus as a purpose and not only as a means. This spontaneous behavior is condition of possibility for the moral act (the follower of the second kantian imperative). The one who spontaneously has the attitude that considers the other (alter) as a purpose and not only as a means, is a beautiful person. Its argued that it is not yet a morally good person. Anyway, "beau-ty" on its Latin etymologies (beau-t‚ and bello) means good, which involves a project that is dialoguing, truthful, respectful and advantageous for the community. It also means that the decision of using the proper means for the goal, has been taken. Once accepted the project, the individual shall act spontaneously on a ludicrous way so that the project may become real. He will be a more meritorious beautiful person if his spontaneous goodness means the overcoming over the experiences that have hurt hi. The matter is: is the moral beauty the highest point of morality? I will work on this topic on the basis of Schiller, Kant, Gadamer, and Sartre.


2020 ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
E.N. Kolokoltsev

The purpose of the study is to actualize the role of descriptions in the novel by M. Yu. Lermontov “A Hero of Our Time” as an important constructive element of the narrative. The most common form of description in the novel is the descriptions of nature and descriptions of the characters’ portraits. The descriptions found a lively response in literature studies, literary criticism, in art criticism, which responded to the paintings of the poet-and-artist and illustrations for the novel. Naturally, it attracted the author’s attention to the study of the works of those scholars, who viewed the features of Lermontov’s narrative manner. In the stories that made up Lermontov’s novel, descriptions play an important compositional role: they accompany the narrative, the thoughts of the characters, and they are often motivated by the author. The article highlights a number of techniques that will allow students to specify ideas about the descriptions in the novel. The students’ comprehension of landscape descriptions can be supported by drawing up a plan that will reflect the spatial and time-line structure of the story “Bela”, which represents both “travel notes” and the novelette. The use of reproductions of Lermontov’s Caucasian landscapes, similar in the object image to its verbal descriptions in the novel, serves as a visible emotional aid in the nature descriptions comprehension by schoolchildren. Turning to Pechorin’s psychological portrait caused such ways of discovery of his portrait features as drawing up a stylistic map that assists students to focus on linguistic means that the narrator uses to relate the hero image with his potential ingrain. The image and words are closely intertwined in the art print that performs the function of figure of speech and gives a spatial image to the piece of writing. The illustration serves as a means of specifying the students’ perceptions of the characters’ portraits, descriptions of nature and the related plot situations. Ways to comprehend a literary text with the wide involvement of works of art assist students to learn about the peculiarities of Lermontov’s narrative manner and facilitate their aesthetic development.


Kalbotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 160-181
Author(s):  
Iva Novakova

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora.The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions.The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY).The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-87
Author(s):  
Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg

This vignette presents Yu Hua´s novel from 1991 and analyses two different interpretations of the novel with fifteen years between them written by the same prominent critic, Chen Xiaoming. The first interpretation was written in 1992 when China was in the early stages of economic reform. The second was written in 2007 when deep-going social changes had affected the life of the individual. By comparing these two essays, I aim to show how a literary text may act as a catalyst for bringing out existential issues at stake at a particular point in time.


2020 ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Florij Batsevych

In recent decades, the researchers of artistic stories have paid their attention to the narrative analysis of a set of weird texts of mystical and absurd content, works of “black humour”, fantastic (khymerna) prose created by a non-anthropic narrator or by an author in a changed state of consciousness. These texts serve the field of actualizing atypical and non-usual narrative structures, the sphere of meaningful changes within the bounds of narrative categories and, which is important, of forming special communicative senses of aesthetic nature. The basic problems of the linguistic analysis of “unnatural” stories are identifying the types of changes in the narration constituents, reasons of these changes and narrative categories (first of all, events, participants, objects, chronotope characteristics, points of view, moduses, modalities, etc.). The article analyses one of the texts of mystical content aiming at the revealing of some specificities of the structure and functioning of the so-called “unnatural artistic narrations”. The object of the research is V. Shevchuk’s novel “The Beginning of Horror”. The subject of the analysis is lingual means of the narrative structure formation, the author’s objectification of the mystical artistic sense and lingual “signals” of a reader’s perception of these senses. The most important semantic means of creating mystical atmosphere of the story are predicates that ascribe the names of their referents atypical dynamic and static features connected with the Christian view of the infernal world. It helps to form narrative events that root in weird situations, which cannot take place in reality. Non-dispositional nature of these situations correlates with the reference to the mystery that goes far beyond the bounds of a usual perceptive and psycho-mental background. Among the pragmatic means of creating mystical atmosphere of the main hero’s story as well as of the novel in general, we specify the individual inimitative perception of the flow of time and modality of “real unreality” formed by the role of an unreliable narrator and a vague point of view of the described event with its perceptive, ideological and time planes of objectification. Due to the increasing interest to various expressions of the esoteric, the increase of the number of artistic works of such content and growth of their popularity, we consider it topical to proceed in further investigations of lingual-narrative aspects of “unnatural” stories, in particular, the ones with the modus of mystical in them.


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