The Contents and the Markers of the Aesthetic Function in the MFAT

Having taken both Aquinas’s theory and Joyce’s development of it as a basis of our assumptions we consider the aesthetic function of the text as its property to evoke an aesthetic pleasure (satisfaction) or disgust. We take INTEGRITY, HARMONY and CLARITY (Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas) as the three objective constituents of the category of the beautiful.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

Integrity

First and foremost we should define the markers of textual INTEGRITY. They are:

1) structural wholeness(accomplishment, integrity);

2) the development of one or two (not more) ideas(events) in a structural whole;

3) the presence of opposites at different levels of the text. [ When postulating the dependence of textual integrity upon the presence of opposites in it we take as a maxim a structuralism thesis that the whole universe (reflected partially in languages and texts as language and speech units) is structured in binary opposites.)

If we take a paragraph or a poem we should note that its structural wholeness is marked by logical coherence. In a paragraph, for instance logical coherence is structured in the following way: (a) introduction of and idea in an introductory sentence (b) accentuation of the idea in a topic sentence (c) development of the idea or argumentation in body sentences (d) summing up in a concluding sentence. In a sonnet logical constituents such as thesis, antithesis, synthesis and conclusion mark structural wholeness. In a narrative, constituents of a plot - (a) introduction (b) setting, (c) a rising action including complications/resolution, (d) climax (e) a falling action (f) catastrophe mark it. Even if a paragraph, or a poem, or a narrative has intertextual units that turn it into a multilevel hypertext, on the surface (in a space between the margin) it could not be structured differently, otherwise it will loose its integrity

These properties are characteristic for the text under analysis (the final episode from “Ulysses”). Notwithstanding its peculiar punctuation it presents an integrated (accomplished) unit. In other words this text shares with other texts the markers of integrity, i.e.

· It offers the reminiscences of a single event (Bloom’s proposal to Marion on a June day of 1888 in Gibraltar – deixis 1) that is being projected upon the moment of action (love-making in the evening of the 16^th of June 1904 – deixis 2). It is obvious that not more than two events are in the center of the text development.

· The whole episode is structured as a narrative. When we analysed the Communicative Function of this text we traced the following plot structure:

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

2. rising action: Bloom gave her a passionate kiss;

3. climax: Bloom proposed to Marion

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

5. resolution: they together strolled about the sunlit town;

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

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

· The major opposites of this text are:

a) conceptual – the opposition of natural behaviour and socially conventional behaviour;

b) syntactic - the opposition of traditional punctuation (unmarked in the text) and semantisized and vocalized punctuation;

c) lexical – the opposition of lexemes with positive and negative denotative and connotative meaning.

All these properties allow considering the passage under analysis an accomplished unit. The analysis revealed that this text fits the first objective criteria of the category of the beautiful.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

6.2.2. Harmony:

To analyse textual harmony it is necessary to shift attention to the surface level of the text, to the space between the margins, to the interrelation between the parts of this space. Actually, logical presentation of the text will be scrutinized. If we take dictionary definitions of the terms harmony and logics we can notice the correspondence of their main meanings – the interrelation between parts and the whole, a coherent whole.

V.N.Toporov, Russian semiotician, insists that high organization level subjected to the rules of cohesion is the main characteristic of the space between the margins. Thoughts, ideas, even events may be confused and chaotic, but filling in of the space could not be performed any other way but following the rules [Топоров, 1995:617]. These rules, in their turn, depend upon (1)a language requirements and (2) an author’s intention.

Usually we consider two levels of cohesion (a) surface (without intertextual and hypertextual links) and inner. We scrutinize the following markers of the surface cohesion:

· grammatical means (conjunctions, sentence openings, expressed by participial, gerundial and other phrases and constructions, grammatical parallelisms);

· lexical parallelisms (repetition of words);

· substitution;

· logical hooks (to sum it up, etc.);

· punctuation marks.

When we consider inner cohesion we scrutinize the following markers:

(1) smooth theme and rheme development that turns a new information of the previous sentence into an old one in the following sentence.

(2) Associative development of ideas;

(3) Semantic fields.

As the analysis of a number of texts revealed semantic fields can be regarded as constant (invariant) marker of inner cohesion while theme and rheme development or associative one can be regarded as a variable marker. Narrative texts, for instance, are generally marked by smooth theme and rheme development, while dramatic soliloquies or “stream-of- consciousness” texts are marked either by absolute associative development or by a fusion of associative and theme and rheme development.

The three interlinked semantic fields of nature, love and natural behaiviour harmonize the text under analysis. As it is both a soliloquy and a stream-of- consciousness text associative development serve as a means of inner cohesion. Thus a phrase “God of heaven” turns into the description of a paradise garden, the word heaven being the starting point of associations. After several lines the word God takes its turn (It is for them saying there is no God). These “zigzag-like” associations include theme-and-rheme development. If we consider a passage ( 1) It is for them saying theres no God (2) I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers (3) for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves (4) first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience..., we shall take the first part (1) as a theme, the next part (2) as a rheme, including another theme(3). Besides we can observe here cause-and-effect logical development (because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience). These constant fusion of the two types of cohesion is characteristic for Joyce’s “stream-of-consciousness” texts.

Turning our eyes to the markers of surface cohesion in this text we should note such cohesive means as occasional (invented by the author) punctuation marks, grammatical parallelisms that are constructed of participial phrases, repetition of separate words and their synonyms as well as conjunctions and phrases that render cause and effect relations.

On the whole the harmony of the text (taken as the space between the margins) rests upon grammatical means of expression. On the one hand, such expression seems paradoxical, on the other, inconsistency between the contents of the category of the beautiful (as the semantic basis of the Aesthetic function of the text) and grammatical means of expression only seem to be present. This conclusion goes close together with Roman Jakobson’s point that grammatical parallelisms serve as linguistic expressions of the poetic (aesthetic) function.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

Clarity

This category, being a synthesis of INTEGRITY and HARMONY presents a bridge between the Objective, ontological characteristics of the beautiful to the subjective characteristics, because the process from the synthetic perception of a text to the analytical one and eventually to another synthetical perception completely depends upon choices, knowledge and preferences of readers.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

Conclusion

This way of text analysis is not a universal one, yet several years of academic implementation of it demonstrated that the method of Functional Analysis enables students to decode texts of every stylistic register.

[1] Содержательно-концептуальную информацию и содержательно-фактологическую информацию см.: Гальперин И. Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. М., 1981.

[2] Выделение логических частей – наше.

[3] The essence of this category lies in the interrelation of a newly made text to older texts/

[4] Курсив наш.

[5] Language itself always has excessive signification, that is, it always means more than it may be taken to mean in any one context; signification is always 'spilling over', especially in texts which are designed to release signifying power, as texts which we call 'literature' are. This excessive signification is created in part by the rhetorical, or tropic, characteristics of language (a trope is a way of saying something by saying something else, as in a metaphor, a metonym, or irony), and the case is made by Paul de Man that there is an inherent opposition (or undecidability, or aporia) between the grammatical and the rhetorical functions of language [John Lye, 1997].

[6] It should be noted, however, that Joyce in his works, rolled all these forms into one.

18 Kress, G. Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice.Victoria: Deakin university Press 1985. р.19.

19 Hatim, B. and Mason, I. Discourse and the translator. Longman: London and New York, 1994 р.69

20 Сhandler D., An Introduction to genre theory

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21 Ibid

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