Approaches to text interpretation (based on the preference of one of the textual senses)

• Objective paradigm treats the author’s sense as objective thus being the major purpose of research

• Subjective paradigm relies on the reader’s perspectives only

• Balanced/ rational paradigm treats the textual sense as a dialogue between the author and the reader based on the text (language units)

Schools of literary criticism

Different active schools of literary criticism tend to privilege one of the elements of the reading process (the author, the reader or the text). Let's start with the extremes.

• Author-oriented criticism privileges the role of the author in the text processing. It is the most conservative way of arriving at the textual sense, which takes its roots from the Bible, tending to regard the author as God. The burden is on the reader who must recover the author's intentions.

• At the other extreme we have a critical school that emphasizes the reader’s response in the text processing. The reader is free to make any meaning he wants and the possibility of misreading and misunderstanding is ignored.

• American New Criticism emphasizes the text itself postulating both the relevance of the author's intention and the reader's freedom to make any kind of interpretation.

In the course of Text Interpretation we'll stick to a semiotic approach, which was developed by the Chicago school of rhetorical critics and popularized by R. Jackobson. They treat texts as cultural and historical codes distinguishing the following elements in the process of literary communication (reading):

1. the sender of a message (the author);

2.the message (text);

3.the coding appliance (words);

4.the channel of communication;

5.the signal;

6.the decoding appliance;

7.the receiver of information (the reader);

8.the message (text).

The sender of a message is any object which is able to receive, preserve and use information (a man, a computer).

The message – is a piece of information, i.e. thoughts and feelings the sender of a message conveys to the receiver.

To make it possible for the receiver to understand the conveyed information one should materialize a message, i.e. to express it in the form of a word, a statement, a gesture, a mime, a picture, a work of art.

The coding appliance is defined as a means of realization a message and transforming it into a signal, into an object or into an action which can be perceived by a man.

A human language is the most widely spread code on the basis of which semiotic systems of the second level are formed: the language of fiction, the language of poetry, the language of music.

Under the channel of communication we understand the human voice, writing or the environment in which the signal functions: social, historical, cultural.

The signal is always influenced by the environment.

A polish writer S. Lem said: "A literary text as any other texts is not independent as stones and trees are: they exist objectively. The signal systems conveying information are influenced by the men using them. One and the same book in different spheres of culture, in different historical formations has not one and the same meaning, as its semantics depends on the given number of readers."

Lecture 2. BASIC NOTIONS OF LITERARY TEXT INTERPRETATION

1. The main categories of a literary text.

2. The main components of a literary text.

3. The notion of plot and plot structure of a literary text.

4. Event as opposed to incident: the main distinguishing features of event.

5. The notion of plot elements of a literary text.

6. Stylistic functions of setting in a literary text.

7. The notion of the narrative structure of a literary text.

8. The notion of presentational sequencing and its devices.

The main categories of a literary text

A literary text as a communicative unit is determined by a number of general textual categories (according to O.M. Morokhovsky and V.A. Kukharenko), such as:

• integration

• conceptuality

• implicitness

• discreteness

• modality

• (im)personality

Integration represents unification of all parts of literary text for the sake of achieving its wholeness. The two interrelated facets of integration are cohesion and coherence.

Cohesion designates an outer (or formal) organization of text based on lexical, grammatical and other links between words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc. Coherence is a feature of the internal (or semantic) organization of text based on logical links between successive ideas.

At the heart of a literary work lies an organizing idea (concept), which ensures the semantic unity of the text.

• conceptuality ─ is an organization of a literary text around a certain idea. It is the most fundamental textual category (V.A. Kukharenko )

The reader's comprehension of the main idea of a literary work results from the profound analysis of different textual components, such as: the theme and the message.

Theme (Gr. thema "something that lies in the foundation") is the general content of a text presented in a condensed way. The theme of any literary work is an answer to the question WHAT IS THIS LITERARY TEXT ABOUT?

"People have a habit of saying "What is the theme of the story. And when they have got a definite statement they got off happy and feel it is no longer necessary to read the story" (Flannery O'connor).

Message is defined as an inference to be drawn from the theme or a problem to be pondered as a result of reading the text. Derivation of the message results from the reader's close inspection of different aspects of a literary text. It addresses the question WHAT CONCLUSION CAN I DRAW FROM THE TEXT? or WHAT PROBLEMS DOES THE TEXT POSE?

The concept of a literary work should be traced both in the textual (explicit, verbal) and subtextual (implicit, deep-lying) layers.

The main idea of any literary text is predominantly implicit, as its abstract sense is expressed by means of concrete images that may evoke various interpretations.

• Implicitness of a literary text is a structural-semantic category often conceptualized as subtext (additional sense and emotional meaning)

• Discreteness of a literary text refers to its formation from distinct parts such as compositional structure and partitioning.

• Text partitioning (архітектоніка) concerns a spatial arrangement of its syntactical, graphical and logical units (sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc.)

• Text composition designates a logical and aesthetic unity of plot elements.