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Extralinguistic factor of literary text (By the example of the novel by M. Drabble "The Garrick Year"
D OI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20534/EJLL-16-4-45-47
Vlasova Natalya Petrovna, Elabuga Institute (Branch) of Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University,
the Faculty of foreign languages, senior lecturer E-mail: vlasovanatalja@yandex.ru
Extralinguistic factor of literary text (By the example of the novel by M. Drabble "The Garrick Year"
Abstract: The article examines some aspects of functioning extralinguistic information in a literary text. The paper substantiates the statement that ignoring extralinguistic information leads to failure to comprehend the literary work in an appropriate way.
Keywords: M. Drabble, "The Garrick Year", extralinguistic factor, background knowledge.
It is common knowledge that a literary work is created to embody the author's intention, to get his knowledge and ideas of the objective reality across to the reader. The author implements this in the manner peculiar to him, employing various combinations of language units, stylistic devices and expressive means. Yet it seems that to use only a language-based approach for comprehension of a literary work is far from being sufficient as it is inseparably linked with the writer, the place and the time when it was written, with national and cultural features it expresses. Lotman Iu.M. insists on seeing a literary work as an organic whole [4]. Markovina I. Iu. marks also the communicative function of literary texts in intercultural communication [5]. According to Lichachev D. S. [3], any literary phenomenon reflects reality to greater or less degree. We cannot consider a literary work without taking into account its connection with national culture, because the reality reflected by the writer may differ from that which the reader belongs to or which he is acquainted to. Intercultural communication frequently and typically occurs by means of texts, primarily literary texts.
The extralinguistic parameter of a literary text is connected with the notion vertical context, which is defined by Gubbenet I. V. as all social way of life, ideas, attitudes of a given social stratum, knowledge of which is necessary for readers living in different countries and in different historical time to comprehend the work of this or that writer belonging to a certain literary trend and tradition [2, 7]. One of the categories of vertical context is the so-called background knowledge. It may be various in character, usually we include here such things as onomastic phenomena, the material world (houses, transport, furniture, clothes, etc.) and some other things. Gubbenet I. V. notes that ignoring details may lead to failure to grasp the idea in a greater or less degree [2].
The article considers the importance ofextralinguistic information while analyzing the novel by Margaret Drabble "The Garrick Year". Before starting to read the novel, third-year students (12 people) of the foreign languages faculty of Elabuga Institute were asked two questions: 1. Who (What) may Garrick be? 2. What may the book be about? 9 people answered that Garrick may be a man (a student (5), a sportsman (3), just a young man (1), 1 student thought that it was a dog, 2 people had no idea at all. The answers to the second question were as follows: 5 students thought that the novel is about university days, 3 people guessed that it is about one-year preparation for some sport competition, 1 person supposed that it tells about a young man's one-year living abroad, the rest couldn't give any answer. This small experiment proves that to comprehend a literary work, especially of a foreign writer, one should possess extralinguistic knowledge of various aspects, otherwise, the students would have answered that David Garrick (1717-1779) was a famous English actor, playwright and a theatre director [8].
The personality of the writer is also significant when we consider a literary work in a holistic way. Margaret Drabble is a modern English writer (b. in 1939). Even at the stage of familiarizing oneself with her biography, the reader can guess the general nature of the story and possible theme — M. Drabble specialized in English literature at Cambridge and then she taught it there, she is the author of critical studies of W. Wordsworth, T. Hardy and a biographer of A. Bennet. Besides, the art of acting and TV work are things M. drabble knows about as once she wrote a TV play [8].
The novel was written in 1964, the setting of the novel is related to this time, so the reader will surely come across some things and phenomena which mark this historical period, e. g., the characters in the novel use the
Section 2. Literature
old monetary system: 5 bob (1,.41), half a crown (1, 44), because the decimal monetary system was introduced in Britain in 1971 [7]. Another example — Emma, the heroine of the novel, when visiting Hereford Cathedral meets some young people in j eans with the bottoms rolled up, i. e. in the fashion of the 60th, then, reflecting upon local people, she calls those young men teds in blue jeans (1, 120), teds (teddy boys) are fops, yet the contemporary dictionary marks a teddy boy as old-fashioned [6]. The time when the novel was written allows to get an idea of social order and standards in Britain in the 60th. Emma's husband is an actor and she has to follow him to Hereford where David, her husband, is offered to play a year's season at a provincial theatre festival. Emma can't imagine her life without London for many reasons, one ofwhich is that she has been promised a job as a newsreader and announcer, which she describes as an attempt of some television companies at equality of sexes by allowing women to announce serious events. Emma says that she was to be a pioneer in this field [1,10]. So, the reader gets to know that leading positions in TV were given to men at that time.
A wide variety of onomastic realities are represented in the novel — the names of cities (Hereford, Brighton, Cambridge), boroughs and parts of London (Chelsea, Islington, North East, South West, Primrose Hill etc.); the names of newspapers and magazines (The Times, The Guardian, The Clarion, Coronet, etc.); the names of shops (Marks and Spencers, Camden Passage), etc., which can confuse the foreign reader. The setting of the novel is in Hereford but Emma would reflect upon London, its certain parts and places, which allows to get a clear idea of the character's social status. Emma was born in Cambridge, brought up in intelligent surroundings, her father was a theologian. She got education in an expensive girl's boarding school, spent a year in Rome, then, on returning to London she lived on Primrose Hill, which, though, was considered to be not as prestigious as Madingley Road in Cambridge where she used to live [1, 30.]
Emma, remembering her meeting David, mentions White City. The reader who knows what White City is realizes that BBC is meant here. This place is important for both as David participates in TV plays, Emma's ambition is to work in TV (1, 20). Then, with the course of evolving their relations, Emma visits David's place in Chelsea which is traditionally associated with an artistic London borough. After the young people got married, Emma starts looking for a suitable house to live in. She takes it in a very meticulous way, as she didn't want to live "anywhere that was less than beautiful" (1, 30) — she rejects London North West and South West from
the very beginning as she does not consider them eligible for her social position, she can't afford to live in West End, as it is very expensive. In the end, the house if found in Islington, in North East London, a place where, mostly, middle-class people, left-wing politicians and people who work in television, radio and newspapers live [7]. It should be noted that the house Emma chose, its furnishing, in the first place, characterize her in a certain way, besides, the reader has a chance to get knowledge of domestic arrangement of people of a certain social status and profession living in the given historical period of time. Emma and David's house is a typical English terrace house (1, 31), built in the 19th century — it is a house for one family forming part of a continuous row of houses with common side walls [7]. It was again Emma who found them a house in Hereford, consequently, it resembles their London one. It is being furnished and decorated to her sophisticated taste — she is scornful of mass manufacturing things, so Emma carries to Hereford her Liverpool ware teapots (1, 43), carefully wrapped in paper; on the walls of their London house there was Morris wallpaper (1, 18). For the foreign reader it is difficult to appreciate this wallpaper without knowing that W. Morris was a British craftsman who disliked mass production in factories, who designed and made his own furniture and other things, which are still popular [7]. Emma finds such things at jumble sales (1, 27), in junk shops (1, 27, 122), she visits Camden, where there is a market area selling antiques, all this irritates David very much, he calls such things Victorian junk (1, 27).
It is noteworthy that the adjective Victorian is used in the novel rather frequently. We can guess that a foreign reader when asked what the word Victorian means, at best, will say that it is somehow connected with Queen Victoria. In the novel it is used in different contexts — firstly, it denotes the time of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901), then, it is used to describe the style of buildings (red brick) and furniture (made of dark-coloured wood with a lot of ornaments); also it is used to characterize strict moral attitudes where marriages were thought of as permanent, and divorces were not thought of, though there is a belief that at the same time people then often pretended to have better moral principles than they actually had [7]. To take the above mentioned meanings of the word Victorian into consideration, it seems possible to try to interpret the sentence "I read Wordsworth, and Hume, and Victorian novels, and other things" (1, 171) -we may guess what the contents of Victorian novels here are — evidently the books are about values of virtuous family life, if so, it explains Emma's literary choice at the
The motive of confusion of a man in modern literature
described period — at this time she suffered the infidelity of her husband, and she might reflect on her married life and marriage in general. As far as W. Wordsworth (17701850) and D. Hume (1711-1776) are concerned, the former is a famous English poet-romanticist, the latter is a Scottish philosopher writer. These are not the only names from the field of literature that we come across in the novel, among others are: Ch. Dickens (1, 31), Ch. Bronte (1, 53), T. Williams (1, 57), A. Tennyson (1, 81). Going back to the biography of the novel's author, we can suppose that Emma's literary preferences actually mirror the educational and professional background of Margaret Drabble.
Since Emma's husband, David, is an actor, the novel contains much information related to theatre, English theatre, which again can interfere with the foreign reader's reading — first of all, in the title of the novel there is the name of David Garrick (1717-1779), who was born in Hereford and who had a great influence on theatre in England in the 18th century. Besides, as the characters of the book are mostly theatre related people, one can come
across the names of English actors from different epochs, e. g., N. Gwynn (?1650-1687) [1, 28], who is thought ofas the first English actress, S. Siddons (1755-1831) [1, 28], L. Olivier (1907-1989) [1, 58]; the names of theatres — the National Theatre [1, 48], the Oxford Playhouse [1, 70], the London Palladium [1, 83]; the names of newspapers and reference books — Who is Who in the Theatre [1, 94], Dramatic Events [1, 127].
Summing up, on the ground of the studied above, the following conclusions may be drawn:
1) any literary work should be seen as a holistic one, as an organic whole;
2) beyond a literary work there is a reality world which is reflected in the text of a literary work to a greater or less extent;
3) extralinguistic information should be taken into account while analyzing a literary work, otherwise, the reader will fail to comprehend the work in full;
4) including extralinguistic information into the structure of the analysis of literary works promotes to more productive intercultural communication.
References:
1. Drabble M. The Garrick Year. - London: Penguin Books, - 1964.
2. Гюббенет И. В. Основы филологической интерпретации литературно-художественного текста. - М.: Книжный дом «Либроком», - 2010.
3. Лихачев Д. С. О филологии. - М.: Русский язык, - 1989.
4. Lotman Iu. M. Analysis of a poetic text: the structure of poetry [Excerpt]. Russian Studies in Literature, - Volume 10, - 1974. (Published online: 19 Dec 2014).
5. Markovina I. Iu. Cultural factors and the comprehension of the literary text. Russian Studies in Literature, - Volume 20, - 1984. (Published online: 19 Dec 2014).
6. Новый Большой англо-русский словарь: в 3 т. - М.: Рус. яз., - 2001. Т. 3.
7. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture. Harlow: Longman, - 2003.
8. Margaret Drabble. Biography. Электронный ресурс: URL: http://www.webbiography.com/biographies/mar-garet-drabble (Accessed 27.10.2016).
D OI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20534/EJLL-16-4-47-50
Vorobyeva Alexandra Nikolaevna, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor of the Chair of Philosophy and Philology of Samara State Institute of Culture E-mail: alexandra.vorobjewa@yandex.ru
The motive of confusion of a man in modern literature
Abstract: The article discusses the works of Russian and foreign literature which reflect painful feelings of modern man, who suddenly realizes the disorder with the outside world as incomprehensible trouble. Keywords: The gap, confusion, utopia, a world of information, literaturinstitut, a book, a reality.
