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The Nightingale and Rose
Questions and tasks
1. Give a short summary of the story.
2. Comment on the title of the story and its symbolic meaning
3. Discuss the category of imagery the story based on.
4. What is the main cultural concept of the story? What stylistic means are used to verbalize it?
5. What conceptual features does the concept Love acquire in the text?
6. Make up the cognitive mapping of the concept Love.
7. Specify the types of the similes used in the text and characterize their functions.
8. What are the allegoric meaning of zoonyms and phytonyms?
9. Formulate the conceptual information of the text.
ANSWERS
The short story of “The Nightingale and Rose” by Oscar Wilde is written in allegorical way and it is about the sacrificing life to love. The enamored student was very upset. The girl he was in love with promised to dance with him if he gave her a red rose. But there were no red roses in the student's garden. Nightingale decided to help the student. But for the bush to bloom, the nightingale had to sing songs to him, while the thorn pierced his heart. The nightingale did this and died. The bush of rose was bloomed with his blood and songs of love. But the sacrifice was in vain. The girl rejects the student, because she found a richer admirer. The student became disappointed with love and again turned to books. And he never understood the songs of the Nightingale!
In literature, symbols are often characters, settings, images, or other motifs that stand in for bigger ideas. Authors often use symbols to give their work with more meaning and to make a story be about more than the events it describes. The image of a rose in this story symbolizes love, and it means that, the nightingale killed himself not for the sake of a flower, but for the sake of love, for the sake of a "rose". So the Rose is a symbol of love. The nightingale is a victim of this love.
The category of imagery in this story expressed both by various stylistic devices: metaphor, epithet, simile, allusion, symbol and the image structure of the text. The plot of the story is very simple. The author introduces the main hero by the words of Nightingale – “Here at last is a true lover. His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow." The student thinks that he is a true lover. He imagines how his sweetheart will dance with him. But at the end of the story when a girl refuses him does not appreciate the red rose, students imaginary world crashes, he starts to think how silly thing love is, and turns to his daily life.
A special mention should be made of a peculiar compositional structure of the text. It consists of two contrasting parts: the imaginary world of the hero and his real life. His illusory world is represented by his words of a positive meaning (If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine) which symbolize her dreams and hopes whereas the verbal signals depicting his real life are represented by words of quite opposite senses (But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.)
The whole structure of the text is based on imagery and abounds in stylistic devices that activate it.
One of the most important tasks in the concept theory is the study of its structure. There are different views and approaches to this problem. Most researchers such as V.I. Karasik, G. Slyshkin, S.G. Vorkachyov, Z.D. Popova, I.A Sternin and others assert that “concept” is composed of three constituents: 1) notional (factual information, i.e. the basic, essential and distinctive features of the concept); 2) imagery (based on the principle of analogy); 3) evaluative (axiological and cultural significance). When the concept is analyzed according to the text, its notional, image-bearing, and evaluative layers should be taken into account.
The main cultural concept of this story is Love and the story based on image-bearing layer. Image bearing layer of the concept of “Love” is as follows:
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