Models of narration in literary texts for children (case study of Norman Lindsay’s fairy tale “The Magic Pudding”)

Abstract

The research focuses on reconstruction of the model of narration “Merry-go-round” in Norman Lindsay’s fairy tale “The Magic Pudding” and revealing lexical, grammatical, semiotic means of its actualization in the text. It is believed that narration refers to the concrete and directly visible way in which a story is told, comprising word choice, sentence length and narrating agent. The model of narration is realized as a cognitive and linguistic construal which we represent as an abstract schema. The model of narration “Merry-go-round” is inbuilt into the narrative structure of the text. The semantics of the name of the model taken from different thesaurus sources: etymological, synonymous and definitional correlates with the name of the game and enables us to reveal typical features of the word and main characteristics of the game itself: it is something pleasant and funny for children, it moves round, has circular movements. Circular fast movements of merry-go-round correlate to the description of its movements in narrative situations in the fairy tale i.e. the repetition of adventures of main characters. On lexico-grammatical level circular movement is actualized via motion verbs. Text illustrations of the fairy tale serve as semiotic means of realization funny circular movements. It is claimed that such narrative structure of the text subconsciously activates in a child’s mind his/her knowledge, memories, emotions connected with the play Merry-go-round and as a result makes a child get interested in a fairy tale and keeps him/her engaged in the development of the plot.