"death"; Horner from the English

Artistic speech in the text of a literary work is the speech of the author (narrator) and characters. By depicting the picture of the world of heroes in the text of the work, the picture of the world of its author is presented. One way or another, it is possible to talk about the expression in the text of a work of art of individual pictures of the world - a picture of the world of a real person, the author of the text, and pictures of the world of fictional characters - the heroes of the work. Therefore, we can talk about the analysis of a literary text as a way of knowing the individual picture of the world of its author - the creator of the work.
One of the characteristic features of John Barth's individual style is the author's use of allusion as an artistic device. According to the Explanatory Dictionary of Foreign Words, allusion is “the correlation of what is being described or happening in reality with a stable concept or phrase of a literary, historical, mythological, etc. nature.” Allusion as an artistic technique that enriches the image with additional associative meanings by similarity or difference through a hint is formed at the intuitive level of artistic creativity and aesthetic perception and is used by artists quite consciously as a technique. Allusions in art are evidence of the continuity and dialogue of the artistic process.
Examples of allusions in the texts of analyzed novels are the title of the work (“ The floating Opera "- a link to the stable phrase" " Floating Opera " showboat "), the names of the protagonists ( Todd - consonant with the German word tod - "death"; Horner - from the English horner - "stag or one who endows others with horns"). The use of the expression " Damocletian" by the main character of the "Floating Opera" heart " at the mention of one's health is a means of correlating the real state of affairs with a stable concept of a mythological nature. The sick heart of the hero, like the sword of Damocles, is a constant threat to his life and is the subject of the hero’s endless worries about this, on the one hand, and cynical provocation, on the other. Another example of allusion is the phrase " Laocoon's smile ", repeatedly found on the pages of the novel" End of the Road ". The allusion to the ancient Greek priest-soothsayer Laocoon, whose smile, imprinted on a stone bust, from time to time is a kind of barometer for the protagonist in assessing his actions and deeds, is not accidental.

This allows the author to achieve a "compression effect" in the work (to convey the hero's momentary mood), as well as "expand the scope of reality" (J. Cuddon ) and reveal the variability of the main character's inner experiences in connection with his comprehension of reality as a cosmos.
Occasional combinations of morphemes are widely used in modernist prose. Thus, in the novel The Floating Opera, the protagonist, who is accustomed to not very trusting the diagnoses of doctors, describes his visit to the medical office as follows: “ Then I stripped to the waist , and with stethoscope , watch and sphygmomanometer he checked my heart , my pulse , and my blood pressure , keeping the expressionless face I'd asked for ".
In this context of the phrase, the lexeme sphygmomanometer is an example of the author's occasionalism, which arose from the merger of two stems: sphygmo + manometer . Its meaning is ambiguous. In this case, the name of the device used to measure pressure acquires a touch of irony in its meaning due to the occasional combination of morphemes that perform the function of a “characterizing nomination”. This conveys the mocking attitude of the protagonist as a diagnostic device used by a doctor, on whose face it is difficult to guess any expression ( the expressionless face ) , which, in turn, is a sign of non-communicative observance of medical etiquette, and distrust of all medicine in general.
Occasional (unusual) combinations of words in literary texts are of interest both in terms of the linguistic analysis of this phenomenon and in terms of determining the features of the author's idiostyle , since they are included in the "stylistic core" that characterizes the entire work of the artist of the word or some of its period . Lexical combinations formed by adding two stems of autosemantic words can serve as examples of individual author's new formations. Garrison Mack Jr. appears, as described by Todd Andrews , the protagonist of The Floating Opera, as " a fine , muscular , sunbronzed , gentle - eyed , patrician - nosed , steakfed , Gilman - Schooled , soft - spoken , welltailored aristocrat ... » . Due to the unusual combination of bases that make up the analyzed semantic occasionalisms, they not only draw attention to the designated phenomenon, but are also the most economical way of designating it, in this case, a means of portrait characterization by the author of his character. Two-word author's formations in the above example replace whole descriptive phrases and are a kind of folded phrases.
The figurativeness of language is the application of language in its aesthetic function. The artistic word is figurative not only in the sense that it is metaphorical. According to G.O. Vinokur, “the real meaning of the artistic word is never confined to its literal sense. Here often the broader content is conveyed in the form of another word taken literally. This phenomenon is called the increment of meaning. The increment of meaning creates the figurativeness of artistic speech. V.V. also wrote about this. Vinogradov, noting that the word in a work of art, coinciding in its external form with the word of the corresponding national-linguistic system and relying on its meaning, is turned to the world of artistic reality. It is two-dimensional in its semantic orientation and, therefore, figuratively. A broadly understood figurativeness, not reducible to the inner form of the word, is a property only of artistic speech.
Metaphor is an integral feature of the individual style of John Bart, and in the basis of his first novel, according to R. Wallis , "the metaphorical image" Floating Opera ”, the components of which are the following examples: the introduction is the tuning of the instrument (“ tuning the piano "); the author is a hospitable host, and the reader is his guest; all history is a meandering river (“a meandering stream ")".
“Having chosen theatrical stylization as a frame for his novel, serving as the “limit”, “boundary” of the work, Bart subordinates all the lines of the work to the theatricalization of action, which is at the same time a means of ridicule, parody. Thus, the writer carries out a " polystylistic synthesis", which is a fusion of literature with music and is a method of presenting the whole work to him. It is based on the use in the text of a work of such artistic techniques as allusion, metaphor, symbol, grotesque, parody, quotation. Barthes transfers the law of musical transition from one key to another into the plane of literary composition with great subtlety . His novel is built on the foundations of artistic counterpoint, that is, opposites. Punctum contra punctum - point against point - these are different voices singing differently on the same topic. This "polyphony" reveals "the diversity of life and the complexity of human experiences."
Captain Adam, who plays the role of entertainer on the Floating Opera show-barge, addresses the audience informally and in a relaxed manner, as evidenced by the presence in his speech of truncated syntactic constructions, numerous abbreviations [“ Good evenin ' good evenin ', friends !", " It does my heart good when the floating Op'ry comes round Hambrook Light , I'll tell ye , ' cause
I know that means it's Cambridge ahead... » . This speaks of Adam's desire to win over the public, to capture its interest. He succeeds in this: the hall then responds with enthusiasm (“ We cheered "), then he sighs contritely, trying to console himself (" We Murmured sympathy for ourselves "). The apogee of Captain Adam's performance as an entertainer is the scene of the announcement of the number The Parachute Girl with the inimitable Clara Malla (" the Mary Pickford of the Chesapeake ") as a parachutist. Wishing to provoke the raging audience, the captain-entertainer suggests canceling the number from the stage: “ Shall we call the wholesale thing off ? I'm willin ' !" . But his offer comes across on cutting protest from hall : “NO!” we shouted , almost as one man – two or three rowdies cried “Yes!” but we glared them down . “Do I hear yes?” the Captain asked. “NO!” we roared again, our stares defying contradiction from the one or two hoodlums who are forever spoiling honest folk's fun" .
The dialogue part of this fragment has a pronounced colloquial flavor. The use of stylistically colored colloquial vocabulary in the author's remarks to direct speech as standard ( shouted , rowdies , cried , glared them down ), and reduced character ( roared , hoodlums , folk's fun ) testifies to the emphasized rude negligence in the communication of the communicants . The audience in this situation is equalized in rights with the character, "everything that is told acquires special confidence, reliability and persuasiveness " .
Thus, the writer's picture of the world ("image of the world"), like the picture of the world of any person, is constituted in his mind as a result of the peculiarities of his conceptualization of fragments of being. Since the figurative reflection of reality is expressed in the text of a work of art with the help of linguistic artistic means, the writer's picture of the world embodied in it acquires the features of an artistic picture of the world. The linguo-stylistic features of John Barth's artistic worldview are the techniques used in the texts of the analyzed novels: allusions, author's occasionalisms, metaphors and stylization as a means of parody.