The Concept of Symbolic Text in Literary Text

Abstract

The work is aimed at the study of symbolic titles of prosaic works. Having critically generalized the works of Russian philological school named “on the poetics of the titles” and representatives of  western narratology and considering all the merits and drawbacks, we have worked out the main functional-semantic and pragmatic characteristics that determine the literary text titles’ status of meaningful unit.  Accordingly, we mostly focus on the notion of a verbal symbol which is used in modern linguoculturology, particularly, in a literary text’s interpretation.  The function of presenting culture in whole is performed by the literary text and its symbolic dimension. But it should be noted that symbolism is used not with its general meaning but the specific one such as literary verbal symbol.Our aim is to show and analyse how the lexical units are transformed into the verbal symbols within the literary text and how the cultural icon is shown in the semantics of symbolic titles and finally, how the semantics of symbolic titles implies the icon of the culture, “password” of which they are considered to be. The titles are studied in connection with the main text, at the same time focusing on its literary-cultural context within which it has been created.The results of the study via interparadigmatic and interdisciplinary methodology enables us to make conclusion that conceptual nucleus of a literary work is implied contextually in a symbolic title of a text. Consequently, after it passes through the whole context of the text, it gradually becomes the text symbol.