Main elements of a literary text

Plan
1. The short story genre. The theme.
2. The message.
3. Tonal system.
4. The plot and its structure.
5. System of images. The means of characterization.


1. A short story is traditionally understood as a short story narrative in prose. Its literary classical definition presents a short story as a relatively brief prose narrative, usually characterized by uniformity of tone and dramatic intensity, and having as plot a single action. A popular form of a story is one that tells events with a definite beginning, middle and end. But others may have very little plot and may never have moved to a completed action.
A short story usually contains one event focusing on a single aspect of life. The number of characters is limited but they are rather revealed and developed. The story may belong to a particular type: social, psychological, historical, adventure, detective, science-fiction, documentary or be the mixture of a number of the types.
Note. Why story? We deal with the short prose form of fiction, the short story, because of two reasons:
a) in the short story the linguistic and literary devices are expressively more loaded than in the long form of writing, the novel;
b) because of its length the short story abounds in implicit information.
A literary work is an artistic whole which is created by the interaction of all its elements: the characters, setting, plot, plot structure, language, literary techniques, etc.
The basic problem represented in the story is the theme. The theme is the main area of interest treated in the story. It is the represented aspect of life which the story illustrates.
As literary works commonly have human characters for their subject of depiction the theme may be understood as an interaction of human characters under certain circumstances (the theme of love or love for one’s Motherland; the theme of family relations, war and peace; a clash of cultures; discrimination of any kind, etc.)
Within a single narrative the basic theme may alternate with rival themes and their relationship may be complex. All the themes are linked together to represent a unity, the essential characteristic of a literary creation.
Thus the theme of the story 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.
2. 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 implicitly, i.e. indirectly, and has a complex analytical character, being created by the interaction of numerous implications which the different elements of the literary work have.
Implication is the suggestion that is not expressed directly but understood. Implication may be conveyed by different techniques, such as
a) parallelism (parallel actions of the dream and reality),
b) contrast (e.g. the antithetical thematic planes of the vocabulary; this implication can also be suggested by the antithesis in the title Arrangement in Black and White),
c) recurrence of events or situations (repetition of key words in the text important for the understanding of the message of the story),
d) artistic details which stimulate the reader’s imagination and serve to add something new about a character, or place, or event. E.g. feet and hands with “fingers worked to the bone” in J. Priestley’s Angel Pavement create the image of a woman exhausted by a life full of hardships),
e) symbols. When the artistic detail is repeated several times and associated with a broader concept than the original, it develops into a symbol. It is a metaphoric expression of the concept it stands for. Symbols may be traditional and personal. An example of a traditional symbol is a rose. The rose is a traditional symbol of beauty. Personal symbols are established by means of repetition, repeated association with a broader concept. E.g. in Rain by S. Maugham the rain symbolizes the powers of nature before which Mr. Davidson is powerless and all his efforts are useless and hopeless.
The message depends on the writer’s outlook, and the reader may either share the writer’s views or not. On account of this, L. Timofeyev distinguishes the following types of messages:
a) messages that suggest definite solutions (ідея-відповідь),
b) messages that raise a problem (ідея-запитання),
c) messages in which the solution of the problem is not adequate (ідея-помилка). When analyzing the message one must also 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 retrospectively. The title may have the following functions:
1. It may serve as a means of conveying the author’s message.
2. It may serve as a means of cohesion – it may unite the components of a story to form a whole.
3. The title may serve as a means of focusing the reader’s attention on the most relevant characters and details.
On revealing the author’s message, the reader generally analyses his own rational and emotional response to the story, he/she draws his own conclusions. M.Khrapchenko and L.Timofeyev distinguish between the so-called objective message and the author’s message.
The objective message is the final conclusion that the reader draws from the analysis of his own response to the story and from the author’s message, contained in the story. The objective message may be broader than the author’s message, because it is based on more profound historical experience.
3. In every literary work the writer’s feelings and emotions are reflected in the tone, attitude and atmosphere.
Atmosphere is the general mood of a literary work. It is affected by such elements of a literary work as the plot, setting, characters, details, symbols and l-ge and literary means.
The author’s attitude is his view of the characters and actions. It reflects his judgement of them. It establishes the moral standards according to which the reader is to make his judgements about the problems raised in the story.
The attitude of the writer to his subject matter determines the tone of the story. The tone is the light in which the characters and events are depicted. The tone, therefore, is closely related to atmosphere and attitude.
In fiction tone expresses the relationship between the author (or narrator) and the subject matter. Hence the tone may be sympathetic or impassive, cheerful or serious, vigorous or matter-of-fact, humorous or melancholy and so on. On the other hand, tone expresses the relationship between the author (or narrator) and the reader. Hence the tone may be familiar or official. There are scales of variations of tone. Thus, the tone may be casual, familiar, impolite, deviant, offensive, it may be sarcastic, ironical, sneering or bitter.
M. Khrapchenko noted that one should distinguish between the prevailing tone of a literary work and emotional overtones, which may accompany particular scenes in the story. They all form a “tonal system” which reflects the changes of the narrator’s attitude to his subject matter. The emotional overtones generally form a “tonal unity” which means a consistency of attitude towards the events and characters. This consistency of attitude is reflected in the consistent use of language appropriate to the events and characters. So the “tonal unity” forms the prevailing tone of the story, which plays the dominant role and determines to a great extent the message of the literary work.
The narrator as mentioned above may establish an intimate, personal, or formal relationship with the reader. Hence he may discourse at ease and assume a familiar tone, or he may retain a relative distance and narrate in an official tone. The indices of this aspect of tone are also linguistic.
The official tone is set up by words and idioms that have an official ring, e.g. “relevant” (for “important”), “up to the present time” (for “up to now”), etc. It may be set up by carefully organized syntax and carefully expressed ideas admitting no deviations from the standard.
The familiar tone is established by features of the spoken language, the conversational style in particular. To these features belong colloquial words, idioms, jargonisms, and slang. Delaying devices (e.g. sort of, well, shall I say), colloquial parenthetic phrases (e.g. you know what I mean) – all contribute to the establishment of a personal relationship between the narrator and the reader, and the same time they set up a familiar tone.
Thus, a story's style and voice contribute to its tone. Tone refers to the attitude that the story creates toward its subject matter. For example, a story may convey an earnest and sincere tone toward its characters and events, signalling to the reader that the material is to be taken in a serious, dramatic way. On the other hand, an attitude of humour or sarcasm may be created through subtle language and content manipulation.
4. The theme can be understood from the plot – the plan of a literary composition comprising a series of incidents (events) which are gradually unfolded and each of the incidents comes out of the preceding one and increases in intensity until the highest point is reached. In other words, the plot is a series of interlinked events in which the characters of the story participate.
Every plot is a series of meaningful events. The author selects the events which are meaningful to the message contained in the story, and to characterization, i.e. he/she chooses those that serve to reveal certain features of the characters, their motives and morals. Therefore, each event in the story is always logically related to the message, the theme, the conflict, and is psychologically related to the development of the characters within the story.
The events of the plot are generally localized, i.e. they are set in a particular place and time. The place and time of the actions of a story (or novel) form the setting. For the setting the writer selects the relevant details which would suggest the whole scene. While setting includes simple attributes such as climate or dйcor, it can also include complex dimensions such as the historical period the story occupies or its social context, the significant cultural issues affecting a story’s setting. In some stories the setting is scarcely noticeable, in others – it plays a very important role. The functions of the setting may vary.
1. The setting, especially description of nature, helps to evoke the necessary atmosphere (or mood) which corresponds to the general intention of the story.
2. The setting may reinforce characterization by either paralleling or contrasting the actions.
3. The setting may be a reflection of the inner state of a character.
4. The setting may place the character in a recognizable realistic environment. Such a setting may include geographical names and allusions to historical events. All this creates the credibility of the plot.
5. In fiction the setting, especially domestic interiors (materials), may serve to reveal certain features of the character.
6. When the theme and the main problem involve the conflict between man and 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, conflicts and setting work together to accomplish the author’s purpose.
The interrelation between different components of the plot is called composition. Events recounted in the story are made up of episodes; episodes in their turn, of smaller action details. The plot accordingly consists of exposition, complications (plot development), climax and denouement.
In the exposition the necessary preliminaries to the action are laid out, such as the time, the place and the subject of the action. Some light may be cast on the circumstances that will influence the development of the action. The setting is generally established at the beginning of the story, in the exposition, which is the first component of plot structure. Thus in the exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters and establishes the setting. This component supplies some information on either all or some of the following questions: Who? What? Where? When?
The second structural component which follows the exposition is complications (story, body of the story). Complications generally involve actions and the collision (the opposition of forces or characters), though they might involve thoughts and feelings as well.
The third structural component is the climax. The climax is the key event, the plot's most dramatic and revealing moment, usually the turning point of the story. It is often referred to as the moment of illumination for the whole story, as it is the moment when the relationship among the events becomes clear, when their role in the development of characters is clarified, and when the story is seen to have a structure.
The denouement is the fourth structural component of the plot. The denouement is the unwinding of the actions; it includes the event, or events, 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 conclusions.
A story may have no denouement. By leaving it out, the author achieves a certain effect – he invites the reader to reflect on all the circumstances that accompanied the character of the story and to imagine the outcome of all the events himself.
The closing of the story is the ending. When it takes an unexpected turn it is called an unexpected or surprise ending.
Novels may have two more components of plot structure: the prologue and the epilogue. The prologue contains facts from beyond the past of the story, the epilogue contains additional facts about the future of the characters if it is not made clear enough in the denouement.
5. An image is a subjective reflection of reality. It is affected by the author’s power of imagination. While reading fiction the images arouse the reader’s response. Any change of a word affects the reader’s response, as words may evoke sense impressions.
Compare:
He was a stout man. “His features were sunk into fatness …
His neck was buried in rolls of fat. He sat in
The chair … his great belly thrust forward …”
(S. Maugham. Red)
The images created by figures of speech in S. Maugham’s description call up a visual picture of a concrete fat man and evoke in the reader definite feelings, including those of antipathy and even aversion. Whereas “He was a stout man” does not arouse negative feelings.
It must be noted that the images of a literary work form a system, which comprises a hierarchy of images, beginning with micro-images (formed by a word or a combination of words, the so-called artistic details) and ending with synthetic images (formed by the whole literary work).
In literature attention is centered on man, his character and behaviour. That explains why the character-image is generally considered to be the main element of a literary work; the images of things and landscape are subordinated to the character-image. Thus, landscape-images are generally introduced to describe the setting, to create a definite mood or atmosphere. Yet even a landscape-image, as well as an animal-image, may become the central character of the story. E.g., Nature is the main antagonist of the major character in The Old Man and the Sea by E.Hemingway; or again animal-characters are the central characters in The Jungle Book by R.Kipling.
In most stories one character is clearly central and dominates the story from the beginning up to the end. Such a character is generally called the main, central, or major character, or the protagonist. The antagonist is the personage opposing the protagonist or hero.
Characters may be simple (flat) or complex (well-rounded) depending on their level of development and the extent to which they change. Simple characters are constructed round a single trait. Complex characters undergo change and growth, reveal various sides of their personalities. Hamlet is a complex character, as he is brave and hesitant, sensitive and unyielding.
The main character is most relevant in a literary work, since it is through his fate that the message is conveyed. The minor characters are subordinate, they are generally introduced to reveal some aspects of the main character.
The characters may be described from different aspects: physical, emotional, moral, spiritual, social. The process by which the author presents and develops a fictional character is known as characterization. There are two main types of characterization: direct and indirect.
Direct method of characterization means that the character is evaluated by the writer himself or by another character in the story. The author uses indirect method of characterization when he/she depicts the character through his/her actions, manners, behaviour, speech, and the attitude to other characters.
Speech characteristics include:
1. Style markers, such as
a) markers of official style (“I presume”, “I beg your pardon”, etc.);
b) markers of informal conversational style: contracted forms, colloquialisms, elliptical sentences, tag constructions (as “you know”), initiating signals (as “Well”, “Oh”), hesitation pauses, false starts – all of which are normally occur in spontaneous colloquial speech. In fictional conversation they may acquire a certain function as may indicate some features of the speaker’s character, his state of mind and his attitude to others;
2. Markers of emotional state of the character: emphatic inversion, the use of emotionally coloured words, the use of breaks-in-the-narrative that stand for silence (e.g. “and I asked her if she’d rather I … didn’t get married”, “and there I stayed in the middle of the road …staring” – the pause lays emphasis on the words that follow the pause). They indicate nervous state, irresoluteness, deep emotions or doubt.
3. Attitudinal markers: words denoting attitudes (as “despise”, “hate”, “adore” etc.), intensifiers ( as “very”, “absolutely” etc.);
4. Markers of the character’s educational level: bookish words, rough words, slang, vulgarisms, deviations from the standard;
5. Markers of regional and dialectal speech which define the speaker as to his origin, nationality and social standing: foreign words, local words, graphons.
Graphon is violation of the graphical shape of the word. It contains information about the speaker’s origin, social and educational background, physical and emotional condition. E.g. when the famous Sinclair Lewis’s character Mr.Babbit uses “pee-rading” (parading), “Eytalians” (Italians), “peepul” (people), the reader obtains not only the vivid image and the social, cultural, educational characteristics of the personage, but also the author’s sarcastic attitude to him.
6. Markers of the character’s occupation: terms, jargonisms:
7. Markers of the speaker’s individual speech peculiarities (idiolect) which serve as a means of individualization.


Literature
Кухаренко В.А. Інтерпретація тексту. – Вінниця: Нова Книга, 2004.
Пелевина Н.Ф. Стилистический анализ художественного текста. – Л.: Просвещение, 1980.
Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – Vinnytsia: Nova knyga, 2003.
Galperin I.R. Stylistics. – Moscow: Vysљaja љkola, 1981.
Sosnovskaya V. B. Analytical Reading. – Moscow: Higher School, 1974.
Шарова Н.А. Лингвистический анализ художественного текста. – Воронеж, 1983.
Soshalskaya E.G., Prokhorova V.I. Stylistic analysis. – Moscow: Higher School, 1976.
Тураева З.Я. Лингвистика текста: (Текст: структура и семантика). Учеб. пособие. – М.: Просвещение, 1986. – 127 с.
Verdonk P. Stylistics. – Oxford University Press, 2002.
Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык. – М.: Флинта, 2005.
Гальперин И.Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. – М: Наука, 1981.
Єфімов Л.П. Стилістика англійської мови і дискурсивний аналіз. Учбово-методичний посібник. – Вінниця: Нова Книга, 2004.

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