Functions and specificity of metaphorical complexes in D. Kehlmann’s novel «Tyll»

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic representation and functional features of the metaphorical complexes death and movement in the German-language novel discourse. The research was based on the novel «Tyll» (2017) written by the modern German writer D. Kehlmann. The novel tells about the character of German medieval legends Till Eulenspiegel portrayed as vagabond and artist, placed in the landscape of the Thirty Years’ War. The relevance of the research is due to the lack of systematic studies of the novel metaphor and its dominant role in the process of meaning generation in literary texts at the «new turn of the century». The author used an integral approach to the problem under study. The initial theoretical premise of the study is the recognition of the serious cognitive potential of metaphor, realized in the process of artistic cognition. As a result of the research, it was found that the metaphorical complex death is embodied by D. Kehlmann in the novel by sequence of figurative rows that create a metaphorical connection between the arrival of the harbinger of death Till Eulenspiegel and the onset of War. The author suggests considering the process of formation of the metaphorical complex movement in a series of text fragments created with the participation of verbs with semantics of movement, spatial prepositions and adverbs of repetition. Attempting to characterize the rhythmic specificity of the novel text under study, the author comes to the conclusion that the main method used by D. Kehlmann is justification of rhythmic expectation. The rhythm of the text is consistent with the conceptual dance of the main character through subjectively ranged gradation rows with an ascending increment of semantic and emotionally expressive significance, which determine the author’s modality. Metaphorical complexes death and movement have prognostic and compositional functions. The results obtained confirm the metaphoricity of the novel under study and the necessity to analyze other metaphorical complexes as part of the central novel metaphor as an important category of modern German literature.