Practical Focus

How much do the names of the following characters reveal their features?

- Names in Mertvuye Dushi – Dead Souls (Gogol)

Манилов (ср. диал. манила = манщик, манильщик)

Коробочка (коробочка – накопительство)

Чичиков (ничего особенного – нет смысловой нагрузки в фамилии)

Ноздрев (ср. диал. ноздрявый = исполненный скважин, дыр)

Собакевич (собака – злой, грубый)

Плюшкин (плюшка – результат праздной жизни)

- In Chekhov’s stories

«Унтер Пришибеев» - Пришибеев (любит во все вмешиваться)

«Смерть чиновника» - Червяков.

«Хирургия»- Курятин

«Хамелеон» - Очумелов, Хрюкин.

«Жалобная книга» - Самолучшев.

- Names in contemporary English fiction

The Winshaws vs. other characters

Lily in Magpie

Atonement

3. Real people – historical personages, public figures, etc.

Novelists are commonly suspected of (от писателей обычно ожидают, что) basing their fictional characters on real people. Sometimes the singularity of a character is such that even the uninformed reader will suspect that there must have been a real prototype. These real people are historical personages or public figures or celebrities. In recent years there has even evolved a genre of what might be called biographical fiction. Some examples of this, like C.Toibin’s novel about Henry James, The Master (2004), imagine an inner world beyond the normal reach of biography.

A variety of biographical fictionis Roman à clef (роман, в котором под вымышленными именами выведены реальные лица), a novel about real life with fictitious names standing for real people. The “key” is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction.

Created in the 17th century, roman à clef has since been used by writers as diverse as W. S. Maugham in The Moon and Sixpence (1919), in which he follows the life of Paul Gauguin, especially his time in Tahiti;

E. Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises (1926), which is a disguised account of Hemingway's literary life in Paris and his 1925 trip to Spain with several known personalities;

E. M.Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), based on his experiences as a soldier during World War I;

ora more recent example of The Devil Wears Prada (2003) – a novel about a woman constantly bullied by her boss while working as an assistant at a fashion magazine. Although author L. Weisberger worked as an assistant at Vogue magazine, she denies that the book's antagonist, Miranda Priestly, is modeled after the magazine's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include satire; writing about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals; the opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject; the settling of scores.

Historical novels also embody ‘real people’, but in the great majority of cases these characterizations compete with historical accounts (характеристика конкурирует с историческими сведениями), not with our own knowledge: for instance, the monarchs featured in historical novels. Still sometimes these can be more tangible people (материальные, реальные люди), who are known to a reader as human beings rather than the driving force of history (such as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde).

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14