Chronotopal triangle

The category of the personage is interlinked with the categories of artistic time and space for they together form “deixis” of the situation, defining space-time location of action. Semantic and grammatical locatives and temperatives serve as the markers of these categories. Words denoting location (earth, ground, river, France, etc) are considered to be semantic markers of the category of space (semantic locatives). Prepositions of space and directions (in, into, down, upon, etc.) are considered to be grammatical markers of the category of space (grammatical locatives). (see for details Varshavskaya 1984, Belozerova 1999). Words and phrases denoting time (tomorrow, once upon a time, in the evening, this year, etc) are considered to be semantic markers of the category of artistic time (semantic temperatives). Tense forms (is speaking, lived, went, had done, etc.) are considered to be grammatical markers of the category (grammatical temperatives) (see for details Turayeva 1983). M.M. Bakhtin, while scrutinizing this sort of relations in European novels beginning from antiquity, borrowed from P.Uspensky’s physical space-time theory the term “Chronotop” (from Greek c hron - time, topos - place) and introduced it into literary theory [Bakhtin 1987]. He offered his classification of “Chronotops”, taking as a basis the development of actions within the limits of artistic space and time (for example, chronotop of the encounter, chronotop of nature). We believe that this model of relations within the communicative function of the text has two sets of constituents: structural or categorical (the categories of artistic time, space and personage) and semantic (depending upon the mode of textual presentation of this categories). The action may take place in the room, on the road or in the mind of a personage, and to distinguish between these modes of relations we introduce terms “objective Chronotop» and “subjective Chronotop”. Even traditional opposites of good and evil expressed through evaluative lexemes may constitute the semantics of Chronotop (such relations are characteristic for “Macbeth” by Shakespeare or “Dr Jekill and Mr. Hyde” by L.Stephenson – see for details Belozerova 1999). In this model we observe relations of invariant/ variants type where structural set presents the invariant and semantic sets present variants. In other words, when we say “Chronotop of the Road” (Home, forest, evil, etc) or Subjective /Objective Chronotop” the word Chronotop points to invariant interrelation of the categories of artistic time, space and personage, while lexemes home, evil, subjective, etc point to variants of its contents.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

4.4. Chronotopal relations in the passage from “Ulysses”

Considering these relations we are going to use the distributional tables of realia and lexemes (see above), taking for semantic locatives geographic (toponymic) realia and the nouns, denoting the place of action.

Textual characteristics of artistic time depend upon the situation of action. In the text under study the situation develops as follows: The heroine (Marion) in bed with her husband thinks and dreams of Eden, of Gibraltar of her youth when her husband proposed to her. Actually a reader can perceive a triple chronotopal (deixis) situation: (1) the situation of Marion and Leopold Bloom’s love making in their bed in the evening of the 16^th of June 1904; (2) reminiscences situation of her and Leopold’s actions in June 1888; (3) dreams situation of Paradise of love.

The seme of love making is marked by syntactic means and rhythm of the text: by the vocalized punctuation marks and by the shortening space between these marks.

The seme of reminiscences is marked by several narrative properties of the text: the narration of an event and its participants. Marion recollects how she had made Bloom propose to her. She also recollects of her actions –(of kisses, embraces, strolling together and sightseeing together), of other people and animals’ actions (of the guard, of a watchman, of a sleeping fellow, etc.). This narrative chain is interlinked with utterances and descriptions, which are rendered with the help of the verbs in the Past Simple Tense. It is also possible to spot a certain narrative structure that consists of classical narrative elements:

· setting: Marion took Bloom to a paradise-like place in the Gibraltar mountains and gave him a piece of biscuit from her lips;

· rising action: Bloom gave her a passionate kiss;

· climax: Bloom proposed to Marion

· possible complication: She hesitated to accept his proposal and started thinking about other men she had made love with;

· resolution: they together strolled about the sunlit town;

· falling action: new kisses and embraces in the night when they misses a ship.

· Catastrophe: Marion agrees to become Bloom’s wife.

The presence of a narrative structure allows distinguishing chronotops. A first chronotop based upon the situation of lovemaking in a spouse bed (1904) is a dominant one. By means of its surface markers of cohesion it tunes the discursive development of the text. According to its semantics it belongs to the chronotops of “Here and Now” types that are marked by a dynamic character of time and a static character of space (locus). Moreover, its semantics – an actual locus of a spouse bed, actual participants (Marion and Leopold Bloom) and actual moment of the evening on the 16^th of June 1904 – brings us to define this chronotop as an objective chronotop of amalgamation (coming together).

A second chronotop could be defined as a subjective-objective chronotop of amalgamation and nature because it is based upon the situation of the concrete time and space of action (Gibraltar of 1888) presented in the reminiscences of a heroine. Textually this chronotop is marked by realia, geographical and toponymic locatives that dominate, as well as by nomination of numerous participants (the Spanish girls laughing, the poor donkeys slipping half asleep, the fowl market all clucking, the watchman going about all serene, etc.). It is obvious that Participle constructions play a special role in rendering the semantics of chronotop. They signal of the dynamic characteristics of time and space. Evidently, similar to a previous one, this chronotop belongs to “Here and Now” types. Therefore we can define it as a synthesis of chronotop of amalgamation and chronotop of nature. It should be noted that Joycean concepts of nature and natural man evolved around his concept of a town that presented a sort of a “living texture” and that made people behave naturally, according to their human nature, at least in their minds. The town of the passage under study, being cosmopolitan, harmonious an dynamic, is a place where people behave naturally both in their minds and actions which made us include this town of reminiscences into chronotop of nature. This conclusion in its turn enabled us to trace a link between a type of Chronotop (of nature and of amalgamation), characters’ structure (natural persons) and the concepts of the author.

A third situation, of dreams about paradise-like ideal place, is rendered with a help of locatives that nominate natural phenomena and topoi (all these lexemes are included into distributional tables). The semes of beauty and of virtue being dominating semes of this vocabulary set form a core of a chronotop of nature. Actually this situation and, correspondingly, chronotop of nature roll into one the actual space of a spouse bed, an ever-lasting moment of Marion’s stream-of-consciousness and time-space of reminiscences.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

4.5. Conclusion:

The analysis of the communicative function of the text helped not only to identify the character of interrelation between the categories of the author, his or her text, personages and the reader, but also to describe and identify interrelations between semantics and a chronotop type, personage’s structure and author’s concepts.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

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