UNIT 1. MAIN CATEGORIES OF LITERARY TEXT
Literary text as a communicative unit is determined by a number of categories, the principal ones being integration, conceptuality, implicitness, discreteness, modality, (im)personality. O.M. Morokhovsky and V.A. Kukharenko regard them as eeneral textual categories, as they arc present in texts of all registers (functional
styles) of language.
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.
It is through the reader's repeated reading and analysis that the text.arises as a unity made of the following components:
the message (idea /concept) of the text;
the theme (thematic planes) of the text;
the author's image, including the narrator and narrative, the dominant point of view, forms of presentation;
the image of the reader;
characters and non-human images;
the compositional and genre unity (including the settings, conflict, plot lines and turns, text partitioning);
the tonal system
1.1. Theme and Message of a Literary Work
The theme of a story is the main area of interest treated in the story. There are stories on the theme of love, or love for one's Motherland: there are books on the theme of family relations, or on the anti-war theme.
The theme performs a unifying function. It implies the problem which the writer raises. His view and attitude to this problem is revealed in the way he develops the theme of the story. The most important idea that the author expresses in the process of developing the theme is the message of the story. The theme is therefore organically connected with the author's message. The message is generally expressed indirectly and has a complex analytical character, being created by the interaction of numerous implications which the different elements of a literary work have.
The concept of a literary work should be traced both in the textual (explicit, verbal) and subtextual (implicit, deep-lying) layers. In fact, the main idea of any belles-lettres text is predominantly implicit, as its abstract sense is expressed by means of concrete images that may evoke various interpretations. Implicitness of literary text is a structural-semantic category often conceptualized as subtext.
The message of literary work is revealed through its different facets at all stages of reading and interpretation. The most important clement to be taken into account when seeking out the message of a text is an artistic (poetic) detail - a condensed, laconic and very expressive representation in the text of a complicated, multifaceted phenomenon, fact or idea. An artistic detail names the trait or quality determined by the author to be the most essential part of the whole. This feature may be rather inconspicuous, but at the same lime helpful for reproduction of the implicit content and, what is even more important, the author's attitude. Through the deft use of pictorial, acoustic, and olfactory details, the reader is stimulated to creatively respond to literary images, and in doing so to transcend the written text and enter the world of the author's creation.
A poetic detail serves to create foregrounding, which a specialized usage of language means is perceived as unusual, unexpected, or "deautomatized": foregrounded elements focus the reader's attention on certain aspects of the message.
In fact, any word or represented object / phenomenon have a potential ability to acquire an additional meaning or function in the text as a result of the writer's intention.
In V.A. Kukharenko's classification, artistic details are divided into the following types on the basis of their functions:
!. depicting details that recreate visual images of nature and human appearance; they are usually mentioned no more than once within a text;
2. characterological details that reveal a personage's psychological properties, traits and habits (both through direct and indirect characterization) and are usually found throughout the text;
3. authenticity details that make the reader believe in real existence of the described things and events: they are names of countries, streets, titles, dates, etc.
4. implicit details (implications / implicates) that point to hidden- meanings through external features of the objects or phenomena represented. They are regarded as structural units of the implicit (subtextual) level. The richcr is the reader's thesaurus the more is hisl her ability to identify and decode implications.
Reminiscence is a reference to some other literary work in the fictional text. The use of reminiscences presupposes one's broad knowledge of history and culture. Reminiscences can be classified into direct ones (quotations from literary works), and indirect ones (paraphrased quotations or their semantic and stylistic elements).
Allusion may be defined as a mention of the name of a real person, historical event, or literary character, which is not just a straightforward reference but which conjures up some additional meaning, pointing to a quality or characteristic for which the word has come to stand. Since allusions are not based on direct quotations, they are usually harder to detect than reminiscences. Both allusions and reminiscences call upon the reader's erudition and often run the risk of being overlooked.
_12. Title and Its Function
When analyzing the message contained in the work one must take into
consideration the title of the story.
The title is the first element to catch our eye, but its meaning and function may be determined only retrospectively. The title acquires its precise meaning when related to the whole story. Then it may acquire a totally different meaning, contrary to what its components generally mean.
The title may have the following functions:
• It may serve as a means of conveying the author's message.
• It may serve as a means of cohesion- it may unite the components of a story to form a whole.
• It may serve as a means of focusing the reader's attention on upmost relevant character or details.
• The title may characterize the protagonist.
Any title orients the reader towards the story, it may then serve as a means of foreshadowing. It may also disorientate the reader when it contrasts with the story and acquires an ironic ring.
_13. Plot and Plot Structure
Text composition designates a logical and aesthetic unity of plot elements. jf The plot is a series of connected events in which the characters of the story participate. The events are arranged in a definite sequence to catch and hold the reader's interest. The classical plot structure includes such compositional element. the exposition, the beginning of the plot, plot complications. the climax or culmination, the denouement (resolution), the conclusion or ending. Subplot as a secondary plot is usually connected to the main plot in some way, most often through the relationships between the characters or by mirroring features of the main plot.
The backbone of a plot or its presentational sequencing (.(Jiaoyjia) is the sum of the main events which can be reproduced in a certain logical and chronological order by the reader of the text. Presentational sequencing docs not always coincide with the
underlying compositional structure (ctoaceT), in which the arrangement of the plot events often violates temporal coherence and spatial relationships.
Most stories and novels have plot. But there are some which have no plots. To these belong stones and poems, describing nature! It is difficult to trace the plots in the so-called "novels of ideas" and stories presenting the stream of consciousness. Yet one should bear in mind that the events in a plot need not always involve physical movement, the movement may be psychological. In the latter case the plot reveals the dynamics in the psychological state of a character.
The plot of any story always involves character and conflict. They imply each other. Conflict in fiction is the opposition (or struggle) between forces or characters.Conflicts are classified into external and internal conflicts.
Different types of external conflicts are usually termed in the following way:
• Man against man when the plot is based on the opposition between two or more people.
• Man against nature (the sea, the desert, the frozen North or wild beasts).
• Man against society or man against the established order in the society, when the individual fights his social environment openly, or when there is a conflict between the individual or the established order.
• The conflict of one set of values against another set of values. These sets of values may be supported by two groups or two worlds in opposition.
Internal conflicts, often termed as "man against himself; take place within one character. The internal conflict is localized, as it were, in the inner world of the character and is rendered through his thoughts, feelings, and intellectual processes.
The plot of a story may be based on several conflicts of different types, it may involve both an internal and an external conflicts.
The main purpose for creating a literary conflict is to give the readers insight into the characters' world and maintain their interest in the plot development. The reader's analysis of the conflict may lead him/her to a better understanding of the
textual message.
Authenticity of the writer's interpretation of reality and idiosyncrasy of his her vision of the world are significantly dependent on the way time and space a re reproduced in. the text.
In literary works conceptual time and space, which embrace Universal ideas based on physical laws and historical conventions, as well as perceptual or emotive (individually sensed) time and space are modeled in the form of fictional time and space.
Fictional time and space are not direct representations of conceptual and perceptual time and space, primarily because literary descriptions of time spans land distances) do not correspond to their real duration: a sequence of several years or travel around the globe can be described on one page, while one day can be outstretched through the whole novel. Secondly, while conceptual time is linear, fictional time is usually multidimensional and shifting from past to future within one literary text. Thirdly, depiction of the same historical span or the same area is usuaiK achieved through fragmentary images, not to mention the fact that different author may approach the depiction of the same epoch or locale using different stratagems.
Shifts of the multidimensional time are termed flashbacks (deviations into the past) and flash-forwards /foreshadowing (deviations into the future).
When interpreting literature one usually employs such terms as temporal and spatial settings. The latter can be immediate, i.e. pertaining to a certain fragment i f the narrative, and broad i.e. pertaining to an entire work of fiction. The writer's description of settings may include reconstruction of sights, sounds and smells'. Skillfully created settings provide insight into the characters' world and spur the reader to anticipate certain actions, e.g. the image of a dark alley1 foreshadows either romantic or threatening events.
The functions of the setting may vary .
• The setting helps to evoke the necessary atmosphere (or mood).
appropriate to the general intention of the story.
• The setting may reinforce characterization by either paralleling or
contrasting the actions.
• The setting may be a reflection of the inner state of the character.
The setting may place the character in a recognizable realistic
environment. Such a setting may include geographical names and allusions to historical events.
• In fiction the setting, especially domestic interiors, may serve to reveal the certain features of the character.
• When the theme and the main problem involve the conflict between man and the nature, the setting becomes in effect the chief antagonist whom the hero must overcome.
The setting in a story may perform either one or several functions simultaneously.
It should be noted that characters, actions, conflict and setting work together to accomplish the author's purpose. The setting is generally established at the beginning of the story, in the exposition, which is the first component of plot structure.
In the exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters and establishes the setting. The exposition, therefore, contains the necessary preliminaries to the event of the plot, casts light on the circumstances influencing the development of characters and supplies some information on either all or some of the following questions: who? what? where? when?
The second structural component that follows the exposition is complications. Complications generally involve actions, though they might involve thoughts and feelings as well. As a rule, this structural component consists of several events (or moments of complications). They become tenser as the plot moves towards the moment of decision- the climax. The climax is the key event, the crucial moment of the stoiy. It is often referred to as the moment of illumination for the whole story, as it is the moment where the relationships among the events become clear, when their role in the development of characters is clarified, and when the story is seen to have the structure.
The denouement is the fourth structural component of the plot. It is the unwinding of the actions; it includes the event, or events, in the story immediately following the climax and bringing the actions to an end. It is the point at which the fate of the main character is clarified. The denouement suggests to the reader certain crucial conclusions.
The usual order in which the components of plot structure occur is as follows: exposition, complications, climax and denouement. Novels may have two more components of plot structure: the prologue and the epilogue.
There is a variety of plot structure techniques. A story may have:
• a straight line narrative presentation, when the events are arranged as they occur, in chronological order;
• a complex narrative structure, when the events are not arranged in chronological order and when there are flashbacks to past events:
• a circular pattern, when the closing event of the story returns the reader to the introductory part;
• a frame structure, when there is a story within a story. ! lie t\u: stories contrast or parallel.