UDC

801.7:811.161.1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.37482/2687-1505-V117

Authors

Elena V. Sergeeva
The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia; nab. reki Moyki 48, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8866-4829 e-mail: elena.v.sergeeva@gmail.com

Abstract

Determining the main categories of the literary text is a matter of debate among researchers today. According to the author of this paper, the most significant categories are the following: fiction (virtual information content), egocentricity (image of the author), aesthetics, linguocentricity, and interpretability. The article focuses on the category of interpretability, which is associated with the ability to perceive a text from different perspectives and at different depth levels. Interpretability is the ability of a text to generate ambiguous information that can be read and formulated in different ways and be either perceived or not perceived by the addressee. Description of the interpretability category is exemplified by Bunin’s short stories “The Book” and “The Chapel”. “The Book” allows the reader to perceive several semantic layers, gradually complicating the content of the text and its understanding. This story clearly demonstrates that interpretability of a literary text can reach absolute ambivalence of the perception of this text: life is more important than fictional books, but life itself, probably, exists for the art in order to be embodied in a word. The thesis about multidimensionality and interpretability of the literary text is confirmed when we turn to another short story, “The Chapel”. The analysis of the texts performed demonstrates that a work of art can be perceived ambiguously, its content is interpreted on the basis of acquired additional meanings of its lexical units, various shades of meaning of its syntactic constructions and the possibility to perceive sequential fragments of the text differently, as well as depending on the personality of the addressee. A conclusion is made that the category of interpretability is, indeed, characteristic of the literary text, fully in line with the genre’s specifics, i.e. the aesthetic transformation of meanings in order to create virtual reality with the help of language.

For citation: Sergeeva E.V. The Category of Interpretability of the Literary Text and the Problem of Multi-Layered Interpretation of Prose (Based on Ivan Bunin’s Short Stories “The Book” and “The Chapel”). Vestnik Severnogo (Arkticheskogo) federal’nogo universiteta. Ser.: Gumanitarnye i sotsial’nye nauki, 2021, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 63–71. DOI: 10.37482/2687-1505-V117

Keywords

text categories, prototypical text, interpretability of the literary text, multi-layered semantics of the literary text

References

1. Gal’perin I.R. Tekst kak ob”ekt lingvisticheskogo issledovaniya [Text as an Object of Linguistic Research]. Moscow, 2009. 137 p.
2. Novikov A.I. Semantika teksta i ee formalizatsiya [Text Semantics and Its Formalization]. Moscow, 1983. 215 p.
3. Il’enko S.G. Sintaksicheskie edinitsy v tekste [Syntactic Units in a Text]. Il’enko S.G. Rusistika: Izbrannye trudy [Russian Studies: Selected Works]. St. Petersburg, 2003, pp. 211–218.
4. Novikov L.A. Khudozhestvennyy tekst i ego analiz [Literary Text and Its Analysis]. Moscow, 1988. 300 p.
5. Paducheva E.V. Semanticheskie issledovaniya. Semantika vremeni i vida v russkom yazyke. Semantika narrativa [Semantic Studies. Semantics of Tense and Aspect in the Russian Language. Semantics of the Narrative]. Moscow, 2010. 480 p.
6. Belyaeva N.I. Soderzhatel’nye kategorii khudozhestvennogo teksta i ikh yazykovaya eksplikatsiya (na materiale proizvedeniy Yu.M. Nagibina) [Denotative Categories of the Literary Text and Their Linguistic Explication (Based on the Works of Yu.M. Nagibin): Diss.]. St. Petersburg, 1998. 148 p. Available at: http://www.dslib.net/russkij-jazyk/soderzhatelnye-kategorii-hudozhestvennogo-teksta-i-ih-jazykovaja-jeksplikacija.html (accessed: 25 April 2019).
7. Komarova L.I. Osnovnye kategorii khudozhestvennogo teksta kak fenomena kul’tury [Basic Categories of Literary Text as a Phenomenon of Culture]. Vestnik Tambovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Ser.: Gumanitarnye nauki, 2010, no. 7, pp. 208–214. Available at: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/osnovnye-kategorii-hudozhestvennogoteksta-kak-fenomena-kultury (accessed: 12 April 2021).
8. Syrov I.A. Sposoby realizatsii kategorii svyaznosti v khudozhestvennom tekste [Ways of Implementing the Category of Coherence in a Literary Text: Diss.]. Moscow, 2005. 349 p.
9. Pushkin A.S. Sobranie sochineniy [Collected Works]. Moscow, 1981. Vol. 5. 446 p.
10. Bunin I.A. Sobranie sochineniy [Collected Works]. Moscow, 1956. Vol. 4. 471 p.
11. Yakhina G. Zuleykha otkryvaet glaza [Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes]. Moscow, 2019. 512 p.
12. Rubina D. Russkaya kanareyka [The Russian Canary]. Moscow, 2021. 960 p. 13. Sergeeva E.V. Khudozhestvennyy diskurs kak vnepragmaticheskiy esteticheskiy yazykovoy fenomen [Art Discourse as a Non-Pragmatic Aesthetic Language Phenomenon]. Filologicheskie nauki. Nauchnye doklady vysshey shkoly, 2019, no. 6, pp. 20–28. DOI: 10.20339/PhS.6-19.020
14. Chernyavskaya V. E. Lingvistika teksta. Polikodovost’, intertekstual’nost’, interdiskursivnost’ [Text Linguistics. Multimodality, Intertextuality, Interdiscursivity]. Moscow, 2009. 248 p.
15. Kubryakova E.S. Yazyk i znanie: na puti polucheniya znaniy o yazyke. Chasti rechi s kognitivnoy tochki zreniya. Rol’ yazyka v poznanii mira [Language and Knowledge: Towards Knowledge About Language. Parts of Speech from a Cognitive Point of View. The Role of Language in World Cognition]. Moscow, 2004. 560 p.
16. Evgen’eva A.P. Slovar’ russkogo yazyka (MAS) [Dictionary of the Russian Language (Concise Academic Dictionary)]. Vol. 3. Moscow, 1987. 751 p.