Lecture 3 Plot. Tropes in the Text

Plot is the planned arrangement of events in the narrative. Actions and events in the text are related, and they progress through a variety of conflicts and opposing forces to the climax and resolution.

As the events in a story are planned they differ from random events of real life. The arrangement and interplay of elements in the plot may have numerous patterns in fiction. Modern literary critics focused on a 5-part sequence of events or actions in the plot:

1) the beginning, or exposition;

2) the rising action (зав’язка );

3) the climax;

4) the falling action (or denouement (розв’язка );

5) the ending (the resolution of the conflict).

The 19-th century German literary critic Gustav Freytag proposed a diagram in the form of the pyramid as an illustration of the traditional, or conventional plot.

3 Climax

2 Rising

Action 4 Falling Action

1 Exposition 5 Ending

1) Exposition is the unfolding or explanation of the present events or past history necessary to understand the plot development. In the diagram exposition comes early, but in practice it often continues throughout a story or a play as the present action reveals more and more of the past.

The functions of exposition are: 1) to explain or motivate the behavior of characters: 2) to introduce the reader to the main characters; 3) to describe the place of events (setting).

The main types of exposition are: 1) direct, the text begins with it; 2) retarded – exposition comes after the rising action; 3) inverted – exposition comes at the end of the text. E.g. in M.Godol’s “Dead Souls” only in the last chapter of Part One the childhood of Chichikov is described.

2) The rising action. It is the series of actions, events or situations from which the conflict between the characters begins.

3) The climax. It is the critical or the most intense moment in the narrative.

4) The falling action. It is a brief period with less intensity of effect.

5) The ending. It is the resolution of the conflict.

According to V.A.Kukharenko, endings can be open and closed. The closed endings are explicit, they “close” the main plot lines, they lead their main characters to the end of their lives or to the achievement of their goals. After such endings the reader does not ask questions about the further fate of the characters, it is clear:

e.g. And they lived happily ever after (O.Wilde).

It is typical for children’s books, folk tales, detective stories.

The open ending leaves many questions, moreover it is sometimes expressed by the question: “Who is she? Who is she?” – the last paragraph of “The Basement Room” by G.Greene; “Мисюсь, где ты?” (A.Chekhov, “Дом с мезонином”).

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There are 2 terms which have much in common: fabula – plot. The difference lies in the fact that the fabula includes the events in their logical sequence, in chronological order while the plot involves the course of events in the author’s narration. They may coincide or may differ, like “Conscience” by John Galsworthy or “The Dress” by Thomas.

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One of the elements of the plot is retardation which means slowing down of the plot development. It can involve different descriptions like landscape, interior, appearance of the people. Also it can be the author’s or the character’s reflections of the world, life, etc. We can find a part of the newspaper article or a piece of TV news, technical descriptions – A.Hailey in his novels, Y.Semyonov – “Information for Reflection”, etc. Retardation can have different functions: 1) to depict situations or characters in greater detail; 2) to decrease the tension in the plot.

Another important feature of the plot is leitmotif. Leitmotif is a repeated word, phrase or theme which runs through the text and unites it like rain in E.Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”. Literary critics borrowed this term for the repeated musical phrase in Richard Wagner’s operas, as for example, the word “Nevermore” in the poem “The Raven” by E.Poe.

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An important role in the text of fiction can be played by tropes, especially metaphors, often metaphors make us see similarity between different objects for the first time: But the mist was a mother to him. The mist made him warm; he had the food and the drink of the mist on his lips, and he smiled through her mantle like a cat (D.Thomas). The metaphor connects two notions (mother-mist) which have nothing in common. But we can understand from these sentences (and from the macrocontext) that the mist helps the man, protects him, “takes care” of him as his mother would do.

When metaphors are original and unusual they can help us see the world in a new way by making fresh and surprising connections among the objects around us.

Extended metaphor can be the basis of image-making cohesion. The peculiarity of such type of cohesion lies in the fact that the author connects not the objects or phenomena of reality by the images but which these objects are described (I.Galperin). The role of extended metaphor in image-making cohesion can be seen in the above example mist-mother by D.Thomas or in a famous small poem “The Fog” by C.Sandburg.

The Fog

The fog comes

on little cat feet

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

In this short poem the fog is described as a living being, a cat. The first metaphors are – the fog comes (trite metaphor) on little cat feet (original metaphor). After that Sandburg extends the image of the fog as an animal adding other characteristics – verbal metaphors sits, looking, moves on and a noun metaphor – haunches . On the one hand, the poet describes the fog as something quiet, on the other hand, he creates the visual image of the fog. The extended metaphor, in this way, realizes image-making cohesion.

Tropes are stylistically marked language units and therefore they require special, stylistic devices of translation. According to T.A.Kazakova the following stylistic devices of translating tropes can be suggested: 1) complete, or literal translation; 2) changing the trope, but retaining the image; 3) changing the image, but retaining the trope; 4) changing both the image and the trope, compensation by means of another, not very different trope; 5) omission of the trope. The last variant is not desirable, but it is possible when the cultural or speech traditions of the source and target languages do not coincide.

As an illustration of these devices of translation devices let us take an example of metaphor from Dylan Thomas’s text “A Story”: He was … too big for everything except the great black boats of his boots. The metaphor boats of his boots can be rendered into Ukrainian: 1) by complete translation – човни його черевиків; 2) by changing the trope but retaining the image: його черевики як човни; 3) omission of the trope: його величезні черевики.

While metonymy is often easily rendered into the target language, metonymic (or transferred) epithet is more difficult to translate. The initial phrase of E.Hemingway’s essay “On the American Dead in Spain” The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight can be rendered by two stylistic devices: 1) complete translation, with some lexical transformations; 2) omission of the epithet. The first variant is: Загиблі сплять холодним сном в іспанській землі; the second: Загиблі сплять у холодній іспанській землі.

Extended tropes require some combined devices of translation, but the theoretical aspects of their translations have not been formulated yet.