Интерпретация художественного текста (практикум). Учебное пособие

Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации

Федеральное государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение высшего образования

«Оренбургский государственный университет»

Кафедра английской филологии и методики преподавания английского языка

А.В. Осиянова, О.А. Хрущева

ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ТЕКСТА Практикум

Рекомендовано ученым советом федерального государственного бюджетного образовательного учреждения высшего образования «Оренбургский государственный университет» в качестве учебного пособия для студентов, обучающихся по программам высшего образования по направлению подготовки 45.03.01 Филология

Оренбург

2016

УДК 811.111:82.0(075.8)

ББК 81.432.1я73+ 83.011я73 О 73

Рецензент – доктор филологических наук, заведующий кафедрой теории и практики перевода А.В. Люлина

Осиянова, А.В.

О 73 Интерпретация художественного текста (практикум): учебное пособие / А.В. Осиянова, О.А. Хрущева; Оренбургский гос. ун-т. – Оренбург: ОГУ, 2016. – 118 с.

ISBN 978-5-7410-1497-4

В учебном пособии представлены тексты и задания для формирования и совершенствования навыков стилистического анализа и интерпретации художественного текста.

Учебное пособие предназначено для занятий по дисциплине «Основной язык» для обеспечения аудиторной и самостоятельной работы студентов очной формы обучения по направлению подготовки 45.03.01 Филология, профиль «Зарубежная филология» 3-4 курсов.

УДК 811.111:82.0(075.8)

ББК 81.432.1я73+ 83.011я73

ISBN 978-5-7410-1497-4 © Осиянова А.В., Хрущева О.А., 2016 © ОГУ, 2016

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Введение

Целью данного пособия является развитие и совершенствование навыков стилистического анализа и интерпретации художественного текста у студентов-филологов.

Структура пособия предполагает поэтапную работу над текстом,

знакомство с авторами произведений, аналитическое чтение, глубокое осмысление и понимание прочитанного, детальное изучение компонентов текста и, в конечном итоге, подводит студента к подготовке комплексного анализа произведения.

Данное пособие состоит из 12 частей. Каждая часть основана на коротком рассказе или фрагменте более масштабного произведения англоязычных авторов, содержит краткую информацию о писателе, а также ряд заданий, нацеленных на контроль понимания содержания прочитанного и отработку навыков анализа композиции, идеи, стиля и прочих элементов художественного текста. В приложении предлагается схема стилистического анализа произведения, фразы-клише для применения в ходе устных ответов и окончательного письменного варианта анализа, а также образец анализа одного из классических произведений англоязычной литературы.

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1 A RAISON de COEUR by John Barth

Task 1. Browse the information about the author1.

John Barth, an American novelist and short-story writer, was born on May 27, 1930, Cambridge, Maryland. He is known for the postmodernist and metafictional quality of his work. Together with Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme and others, Barth founded the Black Humour School. Apart from the experimental pieces in Lost in the Funhouse, his bestknown works include the novels The Floating Opera (1956),

The End of the Road (1958), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and The Tidewater Tales

(1987), most of which parody traditional narrative forms. He has received a number of literary awards, including The National Book Award2.

The story A Raison de Coeur represents the fifth chapter of John Barth’s novel

The Floating Opera.

Task 2. Read the story3.

That's right, I pay my hotel bill every day, and reregister every day, too, despite the fact that the hotel offers weekly and monthly and even seasonal rates for long-term guests. It's no eccentricity, friend, nor any sign of stinginess on my part: I have an excellent reason for doing so, but it is a raison de coeur, if I may say so – a reason of the heart and not of the head.

Doubly so; literally so. Listen: eleven times the muscle of my heart contracted while I was writing the four words of the preceding sentence. Perhaps six hundred times since I began to write this little chapter. Seven hundred thirty-two million, one hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred twenty times since I moved into the hotel. And no less than one billion, sixty-seven million, six hundred thirty-six thousand, one hundred sixty times has my heart beat since a day in 1919, at Fort George G.

1Photos of the authors quoted herein come from https://www.flickr.com/.

2Biographical data of the authors quoted herein come from http://www.biography.com/.

3The text of the story comes from https://ru.scribd.com/doc/170239238/John-Barth-Floating-Opera-1979.

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Meade, when an Army doctor, Captain John Frisbee, informed me, during the course of my predischarge physical examination, that each soft beat my sick heart beat might be my sick heart's last. This fact – that having begun this sentence, I may not live to write its end; that having poured my drink, I may not live to taste it, or that it may pass a live man's tongue to burn a dead man's belly; that having slumbered, I may never wake, or having waked, may never living sleep – this for thirty-five years has been the condition of my existence, the great fact of my life: had been so for eighteen years already, or five hundred forty-nine million, sixty thousand, four hundred eighty heartbeats, by June 21 or 22 of 1937. This is the enormous question, in its thousand trifling forms (Having heard tick, will I hear tock? Having served, will I volley? Having sugared, will I cream? Itching, will I scratch? Hemming, will I haw?), toward answering which all my thoughts and deeds, all my dreams and energies have been oriented. This is the problem which, having answered it thrice before without solving it, I had waked this one momentous morning with the key to, gratuitously, gratis, like that! This question, the fact of my life, is, reader, the fact of my book as well: the question which, now answered but yet to be explained, answers, reader, everything, explains all.

Well, perhaps not all, or at least perhaps not clearly. It doesn't directly explain, for example, why I chose and choose to pay my bill daily, every morning, instead of weekly or seasonally. Don't think, I beg you, that I fear not living to get my money's worth if I pay too far ahead: lose money I might, but fear losing it, never. There's nothing in me of Miss Holiday Hopkinson, my ninety-year-old neighbor and senior member of the D.E.C., who buys her one-a-day vitamin pills in the smallest bottles

– for her, the real economy size – and sleeps fully dressed, her arms folded funereally upon her chest, so as to cause, by her dying, the least possible trouble for anybody. No, I pay my buck-fifty every morning to remind myself – should I ever forget! – that I'm renting another day from eternity, remitting the interest on borrowed time, leasing my bed on the chance I may live to sleep on it once more, for at least the beginning of another night. It helps me maintain a correct perspective, reminds me that long-range plans, even short-range plans, have, for me at least, no value.

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To be sure, one doesn't want to live as though each day may be his last, when there is some chance that it may be only his next. One needs, even in my position, something to counter-balance the immediacy of a one-day-at-a-time existence, a life on the installment plan. Hence my Inquiry, properly to prepare even for the beginning of which, as I see it, would require more lifetimes than it takes a lazy Buddhist to attain Nirvana. My Inquiry is timeless, in effect; that is, I proceed at it as though I had eternity to inquire in. And, because processes persisted in long enough tend to become ends in themselves, it is enough for me to do an hour's work, or two hours' work, on my Inquiry every night after supper, to make me feel just a little bit outside of time and heartbeats.

So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life.

Task 3. Focus on the plot. Answer the following questions.

1.What facts have you learnt about the character?

2.What is his diagnosis?

3.What is the reason for his living in a hotel?

4.Why does he pay his rent daily?

5.Do you sympathize with the man?

Task 4. Focus on the text. Do the tasks below.

1.Define the narrative techniques employed in the story.

2.What is the tone of the narration?

3.Identify the type of conflict in the text.

4.Comment upon the plot structure.

5.Share your ideas on the title of the story. Why do you think it is given

in French?

Task 5. Focus on the themes, present them in the form of binaries and

comment upon each opposition. Formulate the message of the story.

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Task 6. Focus on the characters.

1.Define the method of characterization employed in the story.

2.Is the character round or flat? Is he static or dynamic?

3.What image of the character has formed in your mind? What are his key

traits?

Task 7. Focus on the style.

1.Name the key stylistic device that makes the basis of the story. How does it correlate with the image of the character?

2.Enumerate several examples of inversion. What is its function in the

text?

3.What are syntactic and phonetic stylistic means that you may trace in

the story?

4.Comment upon the patterns of the questions posed by the narrator. What effect do they produce?

5.Pay attention to the punctuation of the story. Do you find it peculiar?

Task 8. Make up the whole text analysis according to the given scheme and using the clichés from the appendix (see Appendices A and B).

2 THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS by Ray Bradbury

Task 1. Browse the information about the author.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal. His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and

Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury won the

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Pulitzer in 2004, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century.

There Will Come Soft Rains was first published in the May 6, 1950 issue of Collier’s. Later that same year the story was included in Bradbury’s famous short story collection The Martian Chronicles (1950).

Task 2. Read the story4.

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling., "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric

eyes.

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today..." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge scraped them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them

4 The text of the story comes from http://aroposh.wikispaces.com/file/view/There+will+come+soft+rains.doc.

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away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean. Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eye faded. The house was clean.

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave of a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hand raised to catch a ball which never came down. The five spots of paintthe man, the woman, the children, the ball - remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer. The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, 'Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from the only foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an oldmaidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

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