Strategies of investigating and translating poetical prose of the classical and contemporary English short stories

Alexander Yemets,Anastasiia Zakharchuk,T Andrienko,S Potapenko,L Slavova

doi:10.1051/shsconf/202110501003

Alexander Yemets, Anastasiia Zakharchuk + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202110501003

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Abstract

The article considers the notion of prose poeticalness from linguistic and translation points of view. Prose poeticalness can be defined as the introduction of poetic features into the prose text with the help of such devices as extended metaphors, intertextual allusions, stylistic convergence, syntactical and phonetic repetitions. The investigation involved the analysis of the fairy tales by Oscar Wilde, the short stories by Kate Chopin and Dylan Thomas, which are referred to as classical prose, and the contemporary American flash fiction stories. The strategy of investigating prose poeticalness involved determining the devices of prose poeticalness in each text, defining the linguistic and stylistic components of these devices and their functions. As a result of our research, it is determined that the most foregrounded device of poeticalness is stylistic convergence. In the classical short stories, convergences function in bigger text fragments, they are based on the extended antropomorphic metaphors or similes in the interaction with alliterations. The stylistic convergences are used for poetical description of nature as human beings possessing the ability to speak, to think, to love (Wilde, Thomas), and even as gods (Rob Carney). Biomorphic tropes are used as the core of convergences, as a device of poetical description of people in the stories by Thomas, fairy tales by Wilde, in the flash fiction stories by John Updike, Grace Paley, Leigh Wilson and other writers. In the contemporary flash fiction stories, convergences foreground the ideas of sympathy, tolerance; they help to create a strong emotional effect. The strategy of rendering stylistic convergences in translation of the poetical prose consists in the exact reproduction of images applying literal translation or synonymic substitution and retaining the sound effect in trope components. Mythological and biblical allusions used as a system in the text are a device of poeticalness typical for Thomas's stories. The strategy of translating implicit allusions involves retaining the intertextual comments and giving explication in the text or in the footnotes. It is suggested that the prospects of further research lie in investigating poeticalness in the novels of contemporary writers.

Highlights

While reading the fairy tales by Oscar Wilde, the short stories by Kate Chopin, Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Ray Bradbury or the novels by John Updike or John Fowles, we experience different emotions – sympathy, sadness or joy
The notion of prose poeticalness, from linguistic point of view, was first deeply investigated by the German scientist Wolf Schmid. Schmid defined this notion as the introduction of certain poetic features into a prose text with the help of three major devices of text organization, such as: a) the introduction of mythical thinking and the use of extended metaphors; b) the text paradigmatization; c) the use of intertextual allusions [9: 210-214]
The conducted investigation reveals that the devices of prose poeticalness depend on the author's individual style and on the historic as well as literary period

Summary

Introduction

While reading the fairy tales by Oscar Wilde, the short stories by Kate Chopin, Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Ray Bradbury or the novels by John Updike or John Fowles, we experience different emotions – sympathy, sadness or joy. The effect produced by these and similar literary masterpieces was well described by Erza Pound in relation to a literary image “that gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art” [2: 64]. Very often, such prose texts are called poetical. How to objectively determine such feature as poeticalness of prose? And how to translate such prose in order to retain the features of poeticalness?

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