Linguistic Portrait of Transcendental World Based on The Ebony Tower by John Fowles

Our article deals with the linguistic devices that convey the hidden, parallel, transcendental world in the novella The Ebony Tower. As expected, our study yileded in rich and diverse language material through which the author builds up the elusive domain of myths and legends within the main setting of the novella. It looks like a text in a text. This proves to be a very essential and meaningful linguistic leitmotif. Since it is this overtone that imbues the whole piece of writing with exceptional and unique sound and meaning.

Tales of Possession: A Study of Possession in the Novels of A. S. Byatt and John Fowles

<p>This thesis focuses on four works: John Fowles’s The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and A. S. Byatt’s The Game and Possession: A Romance. The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Possession have frequently been treated together in academic criticism as Possession was a deliberate response to the former. I have extended this pairing because these four works are built around the idea of ‘possession’. While most critical discussions consider the notion of ‘possession’ as one theme among many, this thesis proposes that ‘possession’ dominates the characterisations in these works. The starting point for my argument is Jean Baudrillard’s theory of possession as outlined in his chapter “The System of Collecting”. Baudrillard proposes that “[p]ossession cannot apply to an implement” (7). To possess an object it must undergo an “abstractive operation” (7) until it is “divested of its function and made relative to a subject” (8). This thesis translates that subject-object relationship to characters, where one character is the possessor, another the possessed. While the possessive drive can take on multiple forms, in these works romantic, erotic, intellectual, and creative desires come to the fore. The Collector and The Game involve a one-on-one dynamic. The first is one man’s attempt to romantically possess his female obsession, the second is one woman’s attempt to creatively appropriate and possess her sister. Both novels are preludes to the more complex examinations of possessive intent in the novelists’ later work. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman Charles Smithson undertakes an erotic and romantic quest to possess Sarah Woodruff. Along with this is the socially possessed Ernestina Freeman. The contemporary scholars in Possession all compete to intellectually and creatively possess the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The possessive parties in these works attempt to stabilise their projections under the delusion of reciprocity. Only the title of Byatt’s novel hints literally at ‘possession’, but in all of these works ‘possession’ reveals the nature of relationships between human beings.</p>

Tales of Possession: A Study of Possession in the Novels of A. S. Byatt and John Fowles

<p>This thesis focuses on four works: John Fowles’s The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and A. S. Byatt’s The Game and Possession: A Romance. The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Possession have frequently been treated together in academic criticism as Possession was a deliberate response to the former. I have extended this pairing because these four works are built around the idea of ‘possession’. While most critical discussions consider the notion of ‘possession’ as one theme among many, this thesis proposes that ‘possession’ dominates the characterisations in these works. The starting point for my argument is Jean Baudrillard’s theory of possession as outlined in his chapter “The System of Collecting”. Baudrillard proposes that “[p]ossession cannot apply to an implement” (7). To possess an object it must undergo an “abstractive operation” (7) until it is “divested of its function and made relative to a subject” (8). This thesis translates that subject-object relationship to characters, where one character is the possessor, another the possessed. While the possessive drive can take on multiple forms, in these works romantic, erotic, intellectual, and creative desires come to the fore. The Collector and The Game involve a one-on-one dynamic. The first is one man’s attempt to romantically possess his female obsession, the second is one woman’s attempt to creatively appropriate and possess her sister. Both novels are preludes to the more complex examinations of possessive intent in the novelists’ later work. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman Charles Smithson undertakes an erotic and romantic quest to possess Sarah Woodruff. Along with this is the socially possessed Ernestina Freeman. The contemporary scholars in Possession all compete to intellectually and creatively possess the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The possessive parties in these works attempt to stabilise their projections under the delusion of reciprocity. Only the title of Byatt’s novel hints literally at ‘possession’, but in all of these works ‘possession’ reveals the nature of relationships between human beings.</p>

JOHN FOWLES’ NOVEL “THE COLLECTOR” IN THE PARADIGM OF “DOUBLE CODING”

The purpose of the article is to trace the creative dialogue between elite and mass literature in J.Fowles’ novel “The Collector” as a factor in creating genre modifications in the game field of postmodern literature.Methods. The complex methodology is used in the article. Structural-semantic, intertextual methods, mythopoetic approach, methods of close reading are used for the interpretation and analysis of works of art and essays by J.Fowles.Results. The article examines the strategies of the relationship between the mass and elite in J.Fowles’ novel “The Collector” (1963), which gained special development in the literature of the 20th century and was called “double coding”. Some aspects of J. Fowles’ creative self-identification are traced. The categories “double coding”, “genre polyphony”, and the socio-cultural concept of “success” are considered. It is revealed that the principle of “double coding” is genre-modeling at all levels of the structure of the work, its productivity in the plot-compositional organization of the novel, artistic embodiment of the external and internal themes is clarified. The interrelation of problems, plot and linguistic-stylistic components of the work is considered. It is proved that the author unfolds the model of human relations in an internal topic. In a complex set of problems, the author emphasizes the confrontation between “The Few and the Masses” (J.Fowles), which is manifested in a conflict between the “man of the masses” – Frederick Clegg and the intellectual and spiritual personality of the artist Miranda Gray. The confrontation takes place on a value-mental level, in a situation where two people choose between light and darkness, reason and intellectual limitations, beauty and utilitarianism, freedom and imprisonment, ugly pleasure from power and the injustice of the victim, nobility and meanness. The correlation between traditional genres of high literature and modern mass in the creation of new novel modifications is revealed.Conclusions. In J.Fowles’ postmodernist novel “The Collector”, the principle of “double coding” is one of those that models the genre, participates in text creation, and corresponds to the author’s communicative and receptive strategies. The study of the work in the paradigm of “double coding” proves that such a synthesis contributes to the intellectualization of mass literature, which loses its one-dimensionality, and adds readability to experimental literature by returning it to the plot, intrigue, methods of interest of the recipient. The author combines the objectivity of a traditional novel with the subjectivity of a new 20th century novel.Key words: elite and mass literature, external and internal theme, genre, parable, polygenre. Мета статті – простежити творчий діалог між елітарною й масовою літературами у романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» як фактор творення жанрових модифікацій у ігровому полі літератури постмодернізму. Методи. У роботі використано комплексну методологію. Для інтерпретації та аналізу художніх творів і есеїстики Дж.Фаулза застосовано структурно-семантичний, інтертекстуальний методи, міфопоетичний підхід, методики «пильного читання» (close reading). Результати. У статті досліджено стратегії співвідношення масового й елітарного в романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» (1963), що набули особливого розвитку в літературі ХХ століття й одержали назву «подвійне кодування». Простежено деякі аспекти творчої самоідентифікації Дж.Фаулза. Розглянуто категорії «подвійне кодування», «жанрова поліфонія», соціокуль-турне поняття «успіх». Виявлено, що принцип «подвійного кодування» є жанромоделюючим на усіх рівнях структури твору, з’ясовано його продуктивність у сюжетно-композиційній організації роману, художньому втіленні теми зовнішньої та теми внутрішньої. Розглянуто взаємозв'язок проблематики, сюжетних і мовно-стильових компонентів твору. Доведено, що у темі внутрішній автором розгортається модель людських взаємин. Ускладному комплексі проблем автор акцентує протистояння «Небагатьох та Маси» (Дж.Фаулз), що оприявнено у конфлікті «людини маси» – Фредеріка Клегга та інтелектуально-духовної особистості художниці Міранди Грей. Протистояння відбувається на ціннісно-ментальному рівні, уситуації вибору двох людей між світлом та пітьмою, розумом та інтелектуальною обмеженістю, красою й утилітаризмом, свободою та ув’язненням, потворним задоволенням від влади і безправ'ям жертви, шляхетністю та ницістю. Виявлена кореляція між традиційними жанрами високої літератури та сучасної масової у створенні нових романних модифікацій. Висновки. У постмодерністському романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» принцип «подвійного кодування» є одним із тих, що моделює жанр, бере участь у текстотворенні, відповідає комунікативно-рецептивним стратегіям автора. Дослідження твору в парадигмі «подвійного кодування» доводить, що саме такий синтез сприяє інтелектуалізації масової літератури, яка втрачає свою одно-вимірність, та додає читабельності літературі експериментальній завдяки поверненню їй сюжетності, інтриги, прийомів зацікавлення реципієнта. Автор поєднує властиву традиційному роману об’єктивність зі суб’єктивністю нового роману ХХ сторіччя. Ключові слова: елітарна і масова література, тема зовнішня і внутрішня, жанр, притча, поліжанровість.

The Objectification of Miranda in The Collector

The objectification of women is the crime impossible to obliterate committed by the patriarchal society. It is essentially the denial of human equality. The Collector of John Fowles presents a tragedy of human nature, in which the interweavement of explicit and implicit objectifications reduces women to an inhuman condition and deprives them of life and freedom. This novel implies strong awareness of social criticism and bears realistic significance.

Emphatic Sentences: A Comparative-Translational Study of Formal-Functional Relations in English and Romanian

Emphasis, a well-acknowledged stylistic device, is a carrier of a considerable load of emotional content in the fictional dialogue. Its manifestation can take sundry forms and can be attached to a wide range of feelings and can take different degrees of intensity, all of which determines the creation of the atmosphere and impacts the reception by the readership. This paper reports on the investigation of the occurrence of emphasis embedded in the dialogic utterances of John Fowles’ novel Mantissa. The focus lies on the relation between the formal construction of emphatic sentences and the functional values deriving therefrom. The study entails a comparative analysis of emphatic utterances depicted from the English original text and its translation into Romanian. The three research questions refer to the comparative-contrastive realization of emphatic sentences in the two languages, to the extent to which the functional component succeeds in being transferred to the target language and to possible means of compensation when structural differences pose translational problems. The analysis is structured along a typology of sentences adapted to the nature of the text under scrutiny and to the aims of this study. The findings and conclusions ultimately indicate the importance of establishing a relation between form and function in matter of emphasis in the literary dialogue as an act of communication depending on linguistic devices for its effectiveness.

Explicitation, simplification and neutralisation in the translation of reference

Recurrent features of translation, sometimes labelled as ‘translation universals’, have been intensively investigated within Descriptive Corpus-based Translation Studies. Numerous language pairs have been set under researchers’ lens with a view to observing languages from a contrastive viewpoint, but also individually, in their translational manifestations. This has enabled the identification of characteristic features of the translational facets of languages, which have generated more and more nuanced scholarly theories. This paper examines the occurrence of some of the most frequent features of translation, namely: explicitation, simplification and neutralisation in the translation of reference as a cohesive device. Methodologically speaking, the investigation combines the theoretical and applied areas of Translation Studies, with an interdisciplinary dimension provided by the fusion of methodological input borrowed from Descriptive Translation Studies, Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Studies. The theoretical component of the research refers to issues of contrastiveness between English and Romanian viewed from a translational angle, in terms of equivalence and the occurrence of the three features of translation. The applied area of Translation Studies comprises the empirical approach to the translation of reference, while addressing not only the researchers’ community, but also the practitioners in translation and the translator training environment. The research applies both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the data selected from John Fowles’ novel Mantissa (1982) and its translation into Romanian by Angela Jianu (Fowles 1995). The findings provide insights into the nature and functions of referring expressions as formal links, but also as stylistic devices, and shed light into issues related to contrastiveness of reference between English and Romanian, to aspects of equivalence and translatability, as well as to the occurrence of translation universals.