МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ УКРАИНЫ ТАВРИЧЕСКИЙ НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ им. В.И. ВЕРНАДСКОГО

Кафедра английской филологии

Методические рекомендации по комплексному анализу художественного текста

для студентов дневной, заочной форм обучения и экстерната

специальности 6 030500 «Английский язык и литература»

образовательно-квалификационного уровня «бакалавр»

Симферополь 2010

Печатается по решению редакционно-издательского совета ТНУ от

Составители: зав. кафедрой английской филологии ТНУ,

к.ф.н., доц. Полховская Е.В.., к.ф.н., доц. Князева Н.А.,

к.ф.н., доц. Мазина Е.Н.

Рецензент: к.ф.н., доц. Тимошенко Т.Р.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical fundamentals of literary analysis

   1. Notion of style. Genre

   2. Social and cultural background

   3. Setting and environment

   4. Thematic formation

   5. Gist and problem identification

   6. Author’s tone and intent

   7. Composition and content organization. Types of narration

   8. Characterisation

   9. Language and imagery. Individual style of writing

3. Strategies

4. Standards for evaluation

5. Language in use for analysis

6. Helpful linking words and devices

7. References

8. Appendix. Glossary of Stylistic terms

1. Introduction

• The aim of this Guide in Literary Analysis is to bring together existing models and approaches from literary or cultural studies, to provide methods, tools and procedures for active exploring literary works through reading, response and analysis, which will bring out your own interpretation and account for the ways in which the work produces the meanings you find in it. The ultimate end of a literary analysis is, first and foremost, a deeper understanding and a fuller appreciation of how a literary work communicates a particular set of meanings for a reader, how the resources of literature are used to create the meaningfulness of the text.

• Text analysis is the business of making meaning, an active enterprise that requires imagination, effort, and an engagement with a text; it is kind of interpretation enlarging and deepening our experience - as we interact with a text - in order to come to some kind of conclusion and to gain an earned opinion. It is ongoing and recursive process: as you accumulate opinions, you constantly revise and modify them.

• A textual thing have always been realized as belonging to cross-cultural communication, where meaning is not made with language alone but accomplished by some kinds of social and cultural presuppositions. To make sense of the text, you are to be interested in the actual processes of decoding and interpretation. Reasonable interpretation of a text shows the understanding of its social context, and how social conventions have helped determine its meaning. In effect, a work of literature is not seen as eternal and timeless but is situated historically, socially, intellectually, written at a particular time, with some intents, with particular cultural, personal, gender, racial, class and other perspectives.

• In a literary work the message is delivered through a text (context), subtext (implication, hidden associations) and super-text (connection between the literary text and reality). With the purpose to uncover it, the reader needs to work out through various strategies that let us know what kind of text it is – its genre, grammar and syntax, rhetoric (way of persuading and building up an argument), narration, images, subject matter, all the ways in which we are called by the text to construct meaning.

• Doing the analysis we need to be clear about the model we are using, because that has serious implications for how we understand the presented information and what our interpretations are. This means that we cannot plunge straightaway into an analysis but that we have to consider our assumptions about the text and the relations it has with the wide context and the reader to make sure they are at work. The model of the text analysis, theoretical assumptions and language, that we are drawing upon in order to come to the analysis, must be made explicit.