Interdiscursivity of Biofictional Narration: the Image of Petersburg in M. Bradbury’s “To the Hermitage”

Introduction. The present paper deals with the interdiscursivity in postmodern literary biographic narration (biofiction) in which interdiscursivity is viewed as the author’s strategy of text formation. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the interest of modern linguistics in interaction of different discourse types in literary texts. It is also relevant to study different techniques that the English author uses to represent an external linguocultural context, namely, to create the image of a Russian city in the English-language narration. The novelty of the research is implied by the choice of material under examination, as the constitutive elements of biofictional narration have not been fully defined yet.Methodology and sources. The study is drawn on M. Bradbury’s English-language postmodern biofictional novel To the Hermitage. This biofiction depicts D. Diderot’s trip to St. Petersburg, where he was invited by Catherine the Great. It also recounts the adventures of a modern expedition, which came to the same destination to study the French philosopher’s heritage. The research of discourse interaction is based on a methodology, developed by V. Chernyavskaya. It combines traditional methods of stylistic analysis with discourse analysis.Results and discussion. While analysing the literary space of the biofiction, the following “central” discourses have been identified: Russian-culture-oriented discourse of English as well as historical, political, and autobiographical discourses. The narration is also rich in traits of “periphery” discourses, to name just a few: economical, literary, colloquial French, etc. M. Bradbury uses the strategy of simulated interdiscursivity to make a persuasive impact on a reader’s mind, at the same time involving the reader in fact-fiction semantic game.Conclusion. The analysis highlighted here proved the fact that interdiscursivity is one of the dominant mechanisms an author uses to construct biofictional narration. This strategy reflects some key features of postmodern texts, such as blending of literary genres, a playful montage of different discourse types and ironic mode of narration.

Тhе incarnation of nostalgia in the piano cycle «Love» by V. Barvinsky

The features of nostalgia in the piano loop «Love» by V. Barvinsky are considered. Attention is drawn to the peculiarities of the composer's style in different periods of creativity. In particular, the influence of modernism on the work of V. Barvinsky stands out. So modernist features have appeared in many of the works of the composer: Prelude h-moll, Part II from the cycle «Love», «Prelude» from «Suits to Ukrainian folk themes», «The Frog Waltz», «Preludes of the e-moll», «Fis-dur, Cis-dur», «Trio a-moll», solos «In the forest», romances «Oi luli, luli», «In the evening in the house», Sonnet «Blessing be», «Pastoral prelude to fis-moll», «Youth Quartet», «F-moll Piano Concert», romance «Moon-Prince», «In the Forest», «Oh Fields, Fields», etc. Also available for V. Barvinsky's creative method is the use of dialogue and polylogue, a kind of semantic game that manifested itself in allusions to M. Lysenko, R. Wagner, J. Puccini, K. Debussy, M. Ravel, and others like that. In addition, it refers to nostalgia as one of the characteristic features of modernism, which was particularly manifested in the art of the late XIX - early XX centuries. In music, nostalgia can be called appeals to past styles and epochs, including baroque and classicism. Thus, neo-baroque and neoclassical features are observed by composers I. Stravinsky, P. Hindemit, M. Ravel, J. Roger-Dyukas, G. Fore, D. Miyou, A. Onneger, in Ukrainian music - M. Lysenko, K. Stetsenko. Also, the article focuses on the special discovery of nostalgia in the era of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. It turns out that for this period nostalgia was a characteristic feature that manifested itself as one of the factors of rethinking being. In particular, nostalgia was expressed in the piano cycle «Love» by V. Barvinsky as anxious for his homeland, the bride, grief for lost during the First World War, and so on.

Semantics, game-theoretic

Game-theoretic semantics (GTS) uses concepts from game theory to study how the truth and falsity of the sentences of a language depend upon the truth and falsity of the language’s atomic sentences (or upon its sub-sentential expressions). Unlike the Tarskian method (which uses recursion clauses to determine satisfaction conditions for nonatomic sentences in terms of the satisfaction conditions of their component sentences, then defines truth in terms of satisfaction), GTS associates with each sentence its own semantic game played on sentences of the language. This game defines truth in terms of the existence of a winning strategy for one of the players involved. The structure of the game is determined by the sentence’s structure, and thus the semantic properties of the sentence in question can be studied by attending to the properties of its game.