Conceptual potential of anthroponyms in George Gordon Byron’s poetry

This paper is aimed at revealing the semantic parameters of anthropocentric artistic poetic concepts through analysis of the imagery, aesthetic and conceptual load of anthroponyms in Byron’s poetry. The concepts of monarch, aristocrat, national leader.

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Nataliia Romanyshyn

CONCEPTUAL POTENTIAL OF ANTHROPONYMS IN GEORGE GORDON BYRON'S POETRY

Метою цієї роботи є розкриття семантичних параметрів антропоцентричних художньо-поетичних концептів у поезії Джорджа Гордона Байрона шляхом аналізу образного, естетичного та концептуального навантаження антропонімів. Антропоцентричні художні концепти, що знаходяться у фокусі проведеного дослідження, охоплюють концепти МОНАРХ, АРИСТОКРАТ, НАЦІОНАЛЬНИЙ ЛІДЕР /НАЦІОНАЛЬНИЙ ГЕРОЙ. Матеріалом дослідження є вірші Байрона, що входять до циклу «Єврейські мелодії», та поеми, присвячені особи - стості Наполеона Бонапарта. Розкриття концептуальної інформації здійснюємо із застосуванням контекстуально-інтерпретаційного методу, що є сукупністю процедур, спрямованих на реконструкцію авторського задуму, ідейно-тематичного змісту, домінантних художніх мотивів і сенсів.

Ключові слова: Джордж Гордон Байрон, антропоцентричні художні концепти, художня концептуалізація, поезія англійського романтизму, поетичний дискурс.

Introduction. The famous English romantic poet George Gordon Byron is not just a bright and extraordinary figure in the history of world literature. His personal destiny and work became a symbol of the era. Maturing against the background of the post-revolutionary history of European nations, Byron's work acquired a special social value associated with the development of the philosophy of protest, nonconformism, rebellion, with all its complexities and paradoxes (Павличко 2001: 155). The perception of poet's heritage is ambiguous, and his artistic system is still inexhaustible, since each new era of reception shed a new light, thus, testifying to the continuous «pulsation of artistic worlds» (Федеров 1998: 10).

The purpose of this paper is to disclose the semantic parameters of anthropocentric artistic poetic concepts through revealing the imagery, aesthetic and conceptual load of anthroponyms in Byron's poetry. The anthropocentric artistic concepts that are in the focus of the conducted research encompass the concepts of MONARCH, ARISTOCRAT, NATIONAL LEADER / HERO. The material of the research are Byron's poems constituting the cycle «Hebrew melodies», versatile lyrical and political poems and poems dedicated to the personality of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The object of the research are athroponyms in the above mentioned poetical works. The subject of the research is the role of anthroponyms in creating the content of anthropocentric artistic concepts MONARCH, ARISTOCRAT and NATIONAL LEADER / HERO.

Irrespective of the great number of researches dedicated to the creative heritage of George Gordon Byron, the specifics of Byron's artistic representation of the selected anthropocentric concepts have not been the object of comprehensive analysis, moreover the approach to Byron's poetics from the perspective of artistic conceptology has not become the productive analytical trend, except some recent works (see Lussier 2019; Modrzewska 2020) based on interdisciplinary approach. Versatile lingual-aesthetic resources (explicit and implicit) of a poetic text are involved in the actualization of textual conceptual information. Conceptual information in the semantics of the literary work is also created by its poetic elements that are not the immediate explicit nominators of artistic concepts, but are the imagery and compositional forms that are charged with definite connotations, reflect author's attitude towards definite social parameters and values of the national universe and are the objects of subjective evaluations, author's ideology and aesthetic experience (Romanyshyn 2021). A special role in the processes of artistic conceptualization belongs to anthroponyms. Under the notion of anthroponym we understand the names of people associated with a certain historical, political, religious context, which in the poetic text function either as object of poetic reflection or as lyrical hero (protagonist) or the basis of poetic image. Anthroponyms / precedent names are «allusive doublets of the concept», as «concept-symbols», which on the basis of national-cultural tradition can become an image-idea, being conceptually significant (Приходько 2008: 116). In our opinion, the perception of anthroponym / precedent name is determined by a complex system of meanings that have special value for a particular cultural community, and are a kind of samples for imitation or, conversely, warn against the negative social manifestations. Being introduced into a poetic context, they undergo a process of transformation from the signs of personal identification to the lingual aesthetic, poetic forms that incarnate general philosophic, social ideas and traits of national identities. A special role in creating the additional senses of anthroponym belongs to contextual artistic resources of poetic discourse, because people perceive reality through the prism of culture as a set of texts that are the product of individual and collective artistic creativity. The poeticized anthroponym is a poetic sign, defined by a certain historical and philological context, and alongside with its semantic function, syntagmatic or paradigmatic relations in the system of the work of art, always represents extratextual reality. The meaning emerged in the word can become an expression of the ideological content of the whole text, is able to display the connection of the consciousness of the author and the reader with the code of culture in its development in time and space. It is capable of entering into a dialogue with other texts. It is not only of a recursive character, which has intersemiotic connections with the previous tradition of culture, but also procursive, which is considered as a hypothetical modeling of the impact of the text on the future development of the semiotic universe of culture and its individual semiospheres.

The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that it aims to demonstrate how decoding the sense, symbolism, connotations and pragmatic essence of an anthroponym and anthroponimic images ensures the revealing of a set of cognitive features of the defined artistic concepts that incorporate both the general social and author's subjective experience. The research of Byron's artistic heritage from the perspective of artistic conceptology and the analysis of the system of Byron's artistic representation of the selected anthropocentric concepts could also extend the traditional view on the phenomenon of «Byronic hero».

Methodology. The conceptual level of a work of art is a structured system that contains elements of varying degrees of complexity and abstractness. The research algorithm, which reflects the dynamic nature of the formation and functioning of the conceptual system of artistic text in the plane of its lingual poetic expression and is based on the lingual poetic perspective of research, involves the development of the vector of analytical procedures from textual matter to the concept: from revealing in the sense of a poetic word-image (a carrier of conceptual meaning) information that reflects the characteristic qualities of the concept, the set of its attributes, predicates, associations, imagery, to determining the place of the artistic concept in the author's worldview, its connections with other conceptual dominants and modeling of author's individual and national artistic system.

In the study of the linguistic-aesthetic embodiment of artistic concepts (especially in poetic texts), first it is necessary to take into account:

- the semantic, semiotic and associative dynamics of artistic / poetic text, determined by the nature of poetic language as a specific form of figurative reflection of reality in its (form) aesthetic evolution against the background of historical development of national literary language;

- the variety of associative-figurative ways of explication of concepts, continuity of conceptual structure of the text, in which associative-semantic fields of different concepts can intersect, interconnect with each other on the principle of complementarity, inclusion, etc.

The lingual poetic perspective of the study of artistic concepts requires consideration of the role of thematic, plot-compositional, symbolic levels of the work in the processes of artistic conceptualization, non-textual connections of the work, its inclusion in historical, cultural and social contexts. Consequently, the conceptual information is revealed by application of contextually interpretative method, which is a set of procedures aimed at reconstructing the author's idea, ideological and thematic content, dominant artistic motifs and meanings, preceded by the stage of contextualization - identification of the system of macro- and micro-contexts including «complicated», «implicit», ambiguous forms of actualization of the relevant concept / system of concepts taking into account the author's worldview priorities, philosophical and aesthetic aspects of text creation.

The stage of contextualization involves the selection of the system of textual verbal fragments, united thematically and meaningfully within one artistic and semantic plane. The next stage is the interpretation based on the principle of hermeneutic circle, which involves a set of coordinated analytical operations aimed at disclosing the textual meaning as a movement from individual to general and vice versa, because comprehension of the whole is possible only by understanding its homogeneous and heterogeneous parts in the process of gradual «drawing» of meaning. Applying the contextual-interpretive method to reveal conceptual information, we rely on the guidelines of hermeneutics and receptive aesthetics about the relativity of textual understanding, potential openness of the text, fundamental inexhaustibility of interpretation and inseparability of text knowledge from the self-knowledge of its interpreter (Гадамер 1991; Эко 2006; Stockwell 2002; Tsur 1992).

Background. The reception of Byron's heritage mainly adheres to the principle of close relationship between creativity, poetic activity and the «personal factor» of the poet's biography (Дьяконова 1978; Елистратова 1960: 243-259; Bone 2000; McGann 2004; Cochran 2004; Stabler 2004; Lansdown 2012 (a); Lansdown 2012 (b); Beatty 1969; Clubbe 1997). Scholars focus on the contradictions between theoretical principles, aesthetics and poetics of his works, ideological discussions between Byron and other romantic poets, emphasize the complexity of the model of «Byronism», which embodies the philosophy of rebellion and world sorrow. In the history of literature and literary studies the significant attention to biographical details, ethical and socio -political views of Byron creates a stereotypical image of a poet-exile, an eternal traveler, the status of «superfluous man» in the official social structure (Павличко 2001: 161).

The perception of the poet's work in literary-critical space (Дьяконова 1978; Елистратова 1960: 243-259; Beatty 2008; Callaghan 2019; Eliot 2009: 223-240) contributed to the final consolidation of the conceptual dominants of patriotism and revolution, the quintessence of permanent attributive nominations «ardent defender of the national liberation movement», «advocate of tyranny», «initiator of the progressive, revolutionary trend in romanticism» in the poet's personal image. Thus, the features of Byronism became a special type of artistic worldview (McGann et al. 2006; Jones 2017) - the basis for the creation of artistic anthropocentric images, a set of themes, motifs, poetic solutions, which appeared in the English literature and were adopted by other European literatures.

Along with the dominant features of the «Byronic hero», Byron's poetry «supplies» the reader-interpreter with information resources, the analysis of which provides the knowledge of the general context of the era, understanding of historical processes, cultural and ethnic stereotypes, the way of feeling and experiencing life, axiological reactions on the events of European history. As a result, the poetic conceptualization of man becomes a means of accessing important philosophical generalizations about national and world mythology, the formation of the concept of national hero, political leader, relations between the state and the people, socio-political activities, etc.

Results and Discussion. The comprehensiveness of the reflection of various aspects of social and national reality in Byron's poetic works is achieved through the multifaceted prism of anthropocentric concepts MONARCH, ARISTOCRAT, NATIONAL LEADER / HERO actualization. This artistic conceptualization is achieved and developed by introduction of anthroponyms as elements of poetic plot and composition, as objects of poetic reflection into the poetic micro context. In the structure of poetic text a certain anthroponym (often a precedent name) manifests itself as a complex linguistic and cultural sign, which carries a significant amount of background information generated by the horizontal context and enriched by the poetic context itself. The proper names with a stable associative content are allusive representations of artistic concepts (Приходько 2008: 116). The introduction of anthroponyms (precedent names) in the compositional structure of the poetic text allows the authors to foreground the relevant cognitive features of the artistic concept and, actualizing the rich associativity of the name as a result of socio-cultural aspects of their interpretation, verbalize the related concepts, uniting them into specific hyper conceptual connections that discloses the conceptual sphere of the work and the creativity of the artist.

For example, the name of Stuart Robert Castlereagh (1769-1822), an English aristocrat, a native of Ireland, English Foreign Minister, one of the most influential people in Europe after the fall of Napoleon, is strongly associated with the so called «Irish context». He brutally suppressed the uprising in Ireland, was one of those politicians who actively opposed any manifestation of ethnic identification and national independence not only of Ireland but also of other European nations.

In the poetic context of Byron's works, Lord Castlereagh, named by the metaphorical paraphrase «the Serpent on the Chest of Ireland», becomes a personification of betrayal, hypocrisy, pseudo-patriotism, and mystery, expressed in his allegorical resemblance to the Egyptian sphinx: That Sphinx, whose words would ever be a doubt, / Did not his deeds unriddle them each day - That monstrous hieroglyphic; his cruelty is metaphorized in the image of a fountain splashing water and blood: that long spout / Of blood and water, leaden Castlereagh! His suicide, and especially the way he committed it, gave Byron a reason for a sharp sarcasm: in the tenth and eighth songs of the poem «Don Juan» we find the epithet: Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh! and the metaphor That sad inexplicable beast of prey, that hints on the above mentioned events.

Following the laws of unfolding the meaning and the ideological and artistic context of the poetic work, as a result of which the word receives not only logical, conceptual, but also figurative meaning, the expression Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh is metaphorized. In Byron's epigram written in response to the politician's death, the dynamics of meaning unfolds from the event-specific «to cut one's throat» - «to cut somebody's throat» to the associative «to cut the throat of Britain», testifying to the unity of verbal image when both levels - the literal and figurative - are superimposed on each other and interact. At the same time, the word «patriot» acquires the opposite meanings. Introduced into the composition of the epigram, the figure of Mark Portius Cato the Younger overshadows the ironic meaning of Castlereagh's patriotism - the highest act of whose patriotism was to die and thus to liberate the country from his own person.

The phenomenon of anthroponym's / precedent name's semantics extension and enforcement of its pragmatic function in Byron's poetry is actively combined with the stylistic devices of irony, sarcasm, play on words, allusion, which form the basis of the composition and imagery of many epigrams, epitaphs, political poems written in response to specific events, activating the role of the vertical context in creating the effect of «double coding».

Thus, the moral face of William Pitt (1759-1806), the youngest prime minister in British history and one of the most influential politicians of the time, was skillfully reproduced by deploying the grammatical homonymy of the words «lie» (occupy the position) and «lie» (deceit) and present and past forms of the verbs in the Epitaph For William Pitt. Using the associativity of the important linguistic and cultural concept of «being buried in Westminster Abbey», the poet equates the concepts of dishonesty (as perjury before God) and honor:

With death doom'd to grapple,

Beneath this cold slab, he

Who lied in the Chapel

Now lies in the Abbey (Epitaph For William Pitt).

The realization of the ambiguity of the word brass unfolds multidimensional axiological associations and emotional saturation of the context of the following epigram

Epigram, On The Braziers ' Company Having Resolved To Present An Address To Queen Caroline:

The braziers, it seems, are preparing to pass

An address, and present it themselves all in brass, -

A superfluous pageant-for, by the Lord Harry!

They'll find where they're going much more than they carry.

Byron's open poetic «attack» on the representatives of the national elite was expressed in the transparency of poetic allusions, assigning to the subject corresponding evaluative and emotional attributes. Political poetry was characterized by caustic wit, which manifested itself in the actualization of the ambiguity of the English word, the famous Byronic play on words, etc.

The axiological, moral and ideological content of anthroponyms in Byron's poetic works is substantiated and reinforced by constellation of different stylistic devices. Important in completing the image of the British aristocracy in terms of morality, behavior, thinking and communication by developing the semantic scope of an anthroponym is the role of poetic detail, imagery textual resources that incorporate explicit or implicit author's subjective observation, emotional response to a particular event, which is the basis of various anthropocentric images of Byron's poetics. There the informational, eventful component harmoniously interacts with the empathic component of the meaning of the artistic image reproduced in the artistic form as a result of empathy and contemplation. The emotional-axiological component of the artistic meaning of an anthroponym rests on certain values ascribed to it by society or by the author. It acquires additional senses, deepens the phenomenon poetically modelled by the author, contributes to the psychological aspect of the context, the emergence of implicit meanings due to its sensualistic perception.

In the poems Lines Addressed To The Rev. J. T. Becher, On His Advising The Author To Mix More With Society, Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos and I would I were a careless child the author designs two different vectors of understanding the concept ARISTOCRAT:

- negative, generally named The world, mankind - a world I despise, and specified in the metonimies these cultured lands, metaphoric epithets The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride, with the following distinguishing atributes: wealth, title - the phantom ofpower, name of splendid sound, a hateful control, the voice of those / Whom rank or chance, whom wealth or power, / Have made, the basic stereotypical behaviors - the touch of servile hands, the slaves that cringe around, mingle in Fashion's full herd, crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules, bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd, search for delight in the friendship of fools, that transform the personality into degenerate modern wretch;

- and positive, idealized, where the notion of fame, aristocracy of spirit, devotion to the homeland are at the forefront: fame / Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise; For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death... / Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath; Their glory illurnines the gloom of their grave.

Spiritual dominants of heroism, historical significance of the role of the individual - the subject of poetic image, the lyrical hero-advocate of higher national values - in the structure of anthropocentric images of Byron's poetry contribute to the actualization of the artistic concept NATIONAL HERO. It is manifested by the thematic and compositional lines and artistic details in numerous poetic texts. In the poems Answer To A Beautiful Poem, Entitled `The Common Lot ', Thy Days Are Done, On The Star Of `The Legion Of Honour ', Jephtha's Daughter the poet lays down the general guidelines for understanding the concept of «hero-fighter» - the uniqueness, peculiarity of destiny, deity, greatness of mission, immortality: Some few who ne 'er will be forgot; Thy days are done, thy fame begun; Thy country's strains record / The triumphs of her chosen Son; Thou shalt not taste of death! On The Star Of `The Legion Of Honour'; Let my memory still be the pride, / And forget not I smiled as I died!

The basic cognitive features are the notions of «immortal glory» of the national hero (Some shall exist beyond the grave, Some few who ne 'er will be forgot Shall burst the bondage of the grave; Thy fall, the theme of choral song / From virgin voices pour 'd! honour's laurel ne 'er decay / But bloom in fresh, unfading spring; glory decks the hero's bier, /Or binds his brow), the source of which are his activity, life, destiny, deeds, fight, struggle: The sword, the banner, and the field, his martial worth; The deeds he did, the fields he won, / The freedom he restored! The actional component of the semantics of the image is enhanced, as a rule, by the poetic elements that convey the idea of continuity of generations (Yet nations now unborn will know / The record of his deathless name), the repetitions of the heroism of the past in the present of the nation as a guaranty of its longevity (A bright renown shall he enjoy'd/ By those whose virtues claim reward; Thy name, our charging hosts along, / Shall be the battle-word!), embodied in the metaphors with symbolic components «blood» and «breath»: The generous blood that flow 'd from thee / Disdain 'd to sink beneath: / Within our veins its currents be, / Thy spirit on our breath! (Thy Days Are Done); That the blood of thy child is as pure (Jephtha's Daughter).

The national hero and his deeds serve as a moral guideline of the nation (Awake, my spirit! Think through whom / Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, / And then strike home!; The land of honourable death / Is here: - up to the field, and give / Away thy breath!). They are metaphorized in the notions of light, glimmering, radiance of the immortal souls: Wild meteor of immortal birth; Souls of slain heroes form'd thy rays; Eternity flash 'd through thy blaze; are embodied in the symbolism of the star: Star of the brave! - whose beam hath shed / Such glory o 'er the quick and dead.

In creating the concept NATIONAL HERO, Byron actively resorts to historical and mythological sources - by introducing corresponding anthroponims into the poetic context, by poetizing them and alluding to a set of moral, ideal, behavioral notions. In this case, the allusive reference to the anthroponym is the incorporation of both positive and negative lessons of history, which generally corresponded to the essence of the romantic worldview, with its special attention to prominent historical phenomena, events and figures, with the intention to find the meaning of history in the awareness of the social significance of the past for the present. In Byron's cycle of poems «Hebrew Melodies» historical motifs become the basis of philosophical and political generalizations of the latest experience of the English people and the peoples of

Europe, their historical destinies. The plot is based on the ideas of the struggle for freedom, the inevitability of the collapse of empires, the national significance of the fate of the individual, the disclosure of the concept of patriotism. Representing the movement of history in a mystical-romantic form, as the fulfillment of the will of God, who destroys tyrants and liberates nations, Byron consciously refers to the biblical motif of God's sign, which foretells the death of monarchs (the poems Vision Of Belshazzar and To Belshazzar), expresses the ideas about the inevitable end of any mortal reining irrespective of its form (Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway, / Or Kingly the death, which awaits us today! (Song Of Saul Before His Last Battle)), the fall of king- dooms and thrones (beheld the decline / Of the rays from the mountain that shone, on thy shrine (On The Day Of Destruction Of Jerusalem By Titus); And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, / And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; / And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, / Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! (The Destruction Of Sennacherib)). Whereas the death in the name of the liberation of one's own people is the highest honour: Since our Country, our God Oh, my Sire! / Demand that thy Daughter expire; I have won the great battle for thee, / And my Father and Country are free! (the poem Jephtha's Daughter).

In the artistic form, Byron paints two different pictures of human death - the death as a result of God's terrible punishment, to which oppressors and tyrants are doomed (the poem Vision of Belshazzar), and the heroic sacrifice of a hero-fighter full of life- affirming, revolutionary meaning. Let us compare:

Belshazzar's grave is made,

His Kingdom passed away,

He, in the balance weighed,

Is light and worthless clay (Vision Of Belshazzar).

It must be so; 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink;

And striving to o 'erleap the gulf,

Yet cling to Being's severing link.

Oh! in that future let us think

To hold each heart the heart that shares,

With them the immortal waters drink,

And soul in soul grow deathless theirs! (If That High Word).

The symbolism of biblical anthroponyms of «Hebrew Melodies» (kings Balthazar, Sennacherib, Saul) is complex and multifaceted, and in the general context of Byron's political and civic lyrics it served as a kind of «a mirror» of Europe, gripped by extremely intense and complex struggle of forces, the significance of which is almost impossible to assess unambiguously even from today's standpoint. As a witness of continuous wars for domination and national liberation, which only led to the devastation of his own country and the impoverishment of the people and weakened the few forces of fighters for national independence from the world's ruling empires, the poet sought through the biblical motif of the inevitable fall of any ancient superpowers to warn his contemporaries that the antagonism, wars for enrichment are pointless, the vanity and sinfulness of any power is in its very essence and leads to the inevitability of chaos and death. The recurrence of negative images of monarchs, infinitely distant in time, historical, biblical kings, figures of mythological origin, reflection of the oppressive, dark environment that surrounds them, the motifs of imminent destruction of ancient kingdoms, permeating the poems of «Hebrew Melodies», creates a clear causal connection between the conceptual features of «tyranny - death - oblivion» in the structure of the artistic concept MONARCH.

Byron, however, also creates an image of «royal death» - death, worthy of the leaders of the people (Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft of the sword / Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord), on the battlefield, within the rows of his subjects:

Farewell to others, but never we part,

Heir to my Royalty - Son of my heart!

Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway,

Or Kingly the death, which awaits us to-day! (Song Of Saul Before His Last Battle).

The poet had the ability to grasp the social and historical processes syncretically, to discover the prophetic meanings of future in the tempestuous events of the historical past. Written a few months before the famous Battle of Waterloo, the poem The Destruction Of Sennacherib (February 17, 1815) wonderfully reflects the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe in the early nineteenth century, and embodies the dualism of the conceptual features «victory - defeat» in the structure of the artistic concept MONARCH as inevitable aspects of the fate of any army and commander.

The poem is based on the opposition of imagery «victory», «glory», «deed» and «defeat», «death», «perishability», «destruction» and actualizes the ancient biblical- historical plot. It undoubtedly implicates the «French» subtext and is a kind of poetic reflection of poet's ambiguous attitude to the personality of Napoleon, to whom in the creative heritage of the great romantic poet there is dedicated a series of poems and numerous allusions and reminiscences.

The figure of Napoleon Bonaparte and the conceptualization of the precedent name of Napoleon in Byron's poetry occupies a special position, is characterized by a high concentration of symbolic meanings and plays a key role in actualizing the cognitive parameters of artistic concepts MONARCH and NATIONAL LEADER / HERO. Dualism in the perception of the personality of Napoleon, ambiguity of the evaluation of his historic role and consequences of his actions to the people of France and the whole Europe by the author also informs the possibility to construe these concepts as correlated in their axiological parameters. Although Byron's most notable poetry on Napoleon was written mainly in 1814-1816, his interest in the figure of the emperor dates back to his university years. The dynamics of the poet's personal attitude to Napoleon, recorded in his epistolary legacy, private texts, memoirs of contemporaries, is the subject of historical and literary studies (Tuite 2020; Clubbe 2008). It is a conceptual projection of poet's individual identification (ch aracteristic mainly for English- language critics) that relies on a kind of obvious parallels in the destiny, similarity of characters, behavioral traits, that Byron tended to ascribe to Napoleon and himself (Clubbe 1997). Instead, domestic philological thought tends to reveal the embodiment of moral, ethical and philosophical concepts, figurative reflection of universal relations and processes in Byron's Napoleonic imagery (Ткаченко 2008: 132), that accumulated general cultural, historical, domestic senses in the multifaceted poetic word due to the interaction of extratextual and intratextual (genre, language, etc.) factors.

The contradictory nature of the poet's attitude to Napoleon is a defining feature of the semantic content of all his poetry of political and civic orientation. Byron's idealization of the figure of Napoleon was determined primarily by the fact that the young Bonaparte was perceived as the embodiment of the French Revolution, the liberation of European nations from the oppression of imperialism, as opposed to colonial expansionist policies of Britain, its dominant economic role in trade and political relations on the continent and in the world.

The ambivalence of Napoleon's image is manifested in author's comprehension of his personality as a prominent figure who dared to challenge the world order, as the individual's desire to realize almost limitless human possibilities and at the same time as the embodiment of the conflict of ambitions for power that led to personal and historical catastrophe, to the loss of the sense of freedom and justice won in the process of the wars for national liberation. The positive qualities of the great general are devalued by his policies of injustice, deception, enslavement, and aggressive imperialist wars. The historicism and national specificity of Byron's poetry, especially in relation to the Napoleonic theme, is manifested in the syncretism of understanding the historical events and phenomena, the recurrence of the past in the present and their close interdependence and interrelations, which, in particular, are explicitly verbalized by the epigraphs to the poem «Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte».

The overarching idea of Byron's Napoleonic cycle is the disproportionate ratio between merits and crimes of the national leader, the conflict between his fate as a defender of freedom and the tyrant. Byron brings forward the general philosophical question: «Whether the vanity and ambition of national leader, as the cause of his downfall and destruction of numerous nations, is just an accidence, a casual coincidence of circumstances, the peculiarity of individual destiny and character or the general pattern inherent in the essence of power itself and the dialectic of relations between the power and the people?»

The versatility of Napoleon's artistic image is based on the opposition of verbal images that actualize the opposite cognitive features (The triumph and the vanity) in the structure of artistic concepts MONARCH: «greatness, state, military power» (usually expressed in the frequent forms of verbal past tense) and «defeat», reinforced by the figurative actional schemes «fall», «disappearance», «dispersal», «melting», by a system of metaphors and epithets of explicit and implicit moral evaluation.

Byron pays special attention to the opposition between a dignified, royal, glorious death and dishonor, renunciation of power, emphasizing that the idea of renunciation of power for a person as great as Napoleon is unacceptable and unworthy, worse than death itself. It is described by the poet in metaphorical terms: Thy late repentance, long despair, / Thou throneless Homicide? The poet deprives his poetic hero of his name (Now thou art a nameless thing...) as signs of personal and historical identification, thus achieving a high degree of generalization, emphasizing that such unworthy behavior of the monarch turns him into nothing (Those Pagod things of sabre sway / With fronts of brass, and feet of clay); levels his previous merits (Nor till thy fall could mortals guess / Ambition's less than littleness!; Dark Spirit! what must be / The madness of thy memory!) and makes the progress of national development and the rise of a new national leader impossible:

If thou hadst died as honour dies,

Some new Napoleon might arise,

To shame the world again -

But who would soar the solar height,

To set in such a starless night? (Ode To Napoleon Bonaparte).

In the context of the Napoleonic cycle the system of semantically and associatively connected symbols, cultural dominants and stereotypes - defined by a number of associatively connected anthroponyms and mythological anthroponyms - plays a leading role in revealing the diverse complex of cognitive features of the artistic concept NATIONAL LEADER. Introduction of the system of anthroponyms into the poetic context, the source of which is European mythology, folklore and history, the actualization of stylistic potentials of intertextuality performs both informational (encyclopedic) and aesthetic & pragmatic functions.

The contextual connotation and associative imagery of each of them makes prominent the specific features of the object of poetic image. For example, the disgraceful defeat of Napoleon and his abdication of the throne is likened to the fall of Lucifer: man nor fiend... hath fall 'n so far; one who would soar the solar height. The figure of the legendary ancient Greek athlete Milon (the IV century BC) actualizes the associations with the concepts «carelessness», «self-confidence» and receptively refers to the Napoleon's defeat in Russian campaign. The personality of Sulla Lucius Cornelius, Roman general and political leader (82-79 BC) and Charles V (1500-1558), emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and Spanish king Dionysius the Younger (395 -335 BC) serve as an example of the instability of domination and power, the moral choice of the individual and the statesman, specify the need to choose ethical guidelines. The introduction of the name of Washington to the poetic microcontext, the creation of a double comparison (Washington - The Cincinnatus of the West) testifies to the poetic synthesis of chronologically different realities, cultural codes, author's and social worldview priorities for the ideal image of a national leader. The idealization of the image of the national hero and national leader underlies Byron's key concept of Prometheanism as a symbol of service, self-sacrifice, dignified fate, traditionally associated with the images of fire, burning, glow.

Behind each element of Byron's system of poetic anthroponyms in the cycle of poems dedicated to Bonaparte and the epoch of the Napoleonic Wars there is a large- scale picture of historical reality, which is impossible to assess clearly due to the complex dynamics of passions, significance of certain processes and events that neither the author nor his compatriots and ancestors were able to understand. This determines the axiological and emotional multi-vector interpretation of linguistic and aesthetic forms of concept creation due to the antithetical «split» of the poetic microcontext.

The poem Ode (From the French), written as if on behalf of the French people after the Battle of Waterloo, is of particular importance in this context. The second stanza of the poem reflects the ambiguity of the people's assessment of their own history, whose desire for freedom changed the course of historical development throughout Europe and at the same time turned the freedom into a new tyranny, the difficulty of determining the historical, military and political significance of national political elite. Let us compare the imagery context of two famous French political and military figures - Labedoyere and Murat who are ascribed controversial axiological features:

Labedoyere - whose honour'd grave / Contains the 'bravest of the brave;

Murat - thou, too, of the snow-white plume! / Whose realm refused thee ev'n at omb:

- blood-bought title bears; the warrior's guide; moved his heart upon our foes;

While helmets cleft, and sabres clashing, / Shone and shiver'd fast around thee;

- There be sure was Murat charging! / While the broken line enlarging Fell, or fled along the plain; / There be sure was Murat charging! / There he ne 'er shall charge again!

- Than sold thyself to death and shame / For a meanly royal name; / Of the fate at last which _ found thee;

- Was that haughty plume laid low /By a slave's dishonest blow?

The microcontext reflects the negative dynamics of the transition from the concepts of national leadership, national heroism to the concept of monarchy (on the example of Murat). A symbol of freedom and civic virtue becomes the embodiment of evil and tyranny, a soldier-hero becomes a simple ruler doomed to loss of power and death because of destructive political and personal ambitions.

In a poetic form, Byron proposes a solution to the moral and ethical aspects of the concepts MONARCH and NATIONAL LEADER / HERO: the reason for the defeat of any power is not so much the action of external factors or military factors, but the destructive forces inherent in the nature of power, conflict with its own people, inability to understand and follow its aspirations. Monarchy and national leadership / heroism are simultaneously opposed and related phenomena: The Chief has fallen, but not by you, / Vanquishers of Waterloo! - The Hero sunk into the King? / Then he fell: - so perish all, / Who would men by man enthral! Notinal dimension and the content of words-images chief and king, that verbalize the concept MONARCH is formed, thus, on the basis of the evaluative stratification of their imagery contextual associates: The Chief - the soldier citizen - Glory, Freedom's son, Who, of all the despots banded, / With that youthful chief competed?; King - lone Tyranny, goaded by ambition 's sting, Then he fell, so perish all, Who would men by man enthral.

Byron's biographers convincingly prove the colossal influence of the personality of the French emperor on the worldview of the English romantic (Marchand 1995: 155). This influence was so significant that, according to biographers, the poet himself asserted the spiritual unity between himself and Bonaparte and was convinced of the connection of his own destiny and the fate of Napoleon. Accordingly, the multilevel linguistic-aesthetic format of poetic actualization of the analyzed artistic anthropoconcepts in Byron's poetry, along with civic and political aspects, also includes irrational, emotional, lyrically-intimate semantic roots, actualized in the plane of verbal expressions of psychological states, feelings, desires of the lyrical hero - protagonist as a domination of author's subjective reflections over purely rationalist, objective forms of image.

In the poems From The French (written allegedly on behalf of one of Napoleon's subordinates, an officer loyal to the emperor's at the time of his exile) and Napoleon's Farewell (written on behalf of Napoleon himself, who addresses his homeland and his people), the concept NATIONAL LEADER unfolds in a completely different artistic and semantic plane. Monarch is a man deeply sad, repentant, full of awareness of the tragedy of his own destiny (His fall, his exile, and his grave), the inextricable link between the fate of the national leader and the nation (There are links which must break in the chain that has bound us, / Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice!) and hope for an objective assessment of his role in the national history and the memory of their descendants: (She abandons me now - but the page of her story, / The brightest or blackest, is fill 'd with my fame). He, who was previously called an overthrown tyrant, is named «my glorious Chief, / Sever 'd from thy faithful few; Idol of the soldier's soul!; First in fight, but mightiest now; My chief, my king, my friend, adieu!; The last single Captive to millions in war; thy soul unbent», becomes the object of positive evaluation, emotional attachment and loyalty of those who followed him (Who can tell thy warrior's grief, / Maddening o 'er that long adieu; soldier's faith for thee; By thy side for years I dared Death; and envied those who fell, / When their dying shout was heard, / Blessing him they served so well; All I ask is to divide /Every peril he must brave) and the subject of self-evaluation (I have warr 'd with a world which vanquish'd me only / When the meteor of conquest allured me too far; I have coped with the nations which dread me thus lonely, / The last single Captive to millions in war).

Personalizing and intimidating the image of a national leader, the poet seeks a poetic solution to the age-old philosophical question of the relationship between the great individual and society - «who is the main source of power and the driving force of socio-historical processes?» This relationship is expressed in a set of compositional metaphors and symbols in the words of the lyrical hero, addressed to his people: Farewell to thee, France! when thy diadem crown 'd me, /1 made thee the gem and the wonder of earth. The people elect their leaders who are responsible for their future destiny - the people turn them into a «jewel» and a «miracle», as well as, in fact, lead them to their defeat: thy weakness; his native darkness. The people decide on the fate of their leaders (But thy weakness decrees I should leave as Ifound thee, / Decay 'd in thy glory, and sunk in thy worth) and are the driving force of future victories: for the veteran hearts that were wasted /In strife with the storm, when their battles were won / Then the Eagle, whose gaze in that moment was lasted, / Had still soar 'd with eyes fix'd on victory's sun!

Creating the mythology of the great, where Napoleon occupies a special position (the greatest, nor the worst of men; Extreme in all things; Conqueror and captive of the earth; more or less than man - in high or low), the poet depicts the «human» face of monarchy and national leadership through the deployment of microconcepts love, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, hypocrisy, exile in the figurative-conceptual structure of the poetic context (long adieu; Woman's love, andfriendship's zeal; the sycophants of him; Every peril; His fall, his exile, and his grave). These ideas are characteristic for the whole creativity and world outlook of the English romantic.

The poetic anthroponyms of Byron's works is full of multifaceted symbolic, mythological, and axiological meanings, and their associative field is extremely wide.

Using the multifaceted semantics of anthroponimic images as a combination of aesthetic, emotional principles, the author seeks to enhance the suggestiveness and expressiveness of the work, determines the interpretation of its main semantic line, the leading motif. The introduction of numerous precedent names into the canvas of a work of art sets the main guidelines for author's individual perception and reflection of social, historic processes and events both of his own country and the European continent, highlight moral, axiological, existential aspects of the phenomena of monarchy, national leadership, national heroism from the perspective of their impact on both the destiny of his own country and the peoples of Europe. Moreover, in the symbolic, associative and figurative dimensions, anthroponyms / precedent names correlate with other artistic forms of the poetic context for the profiling of the conceptual features of analyzed concepts, which form the moral political, economic, cultural foundations of society.

Conclusions. Thus, in Byron's poetry the understanding of fundamental nationbuilding political categories is carried out through the deployment of a network of artistic anthropoconcepts that in the unity of their semantic aspects display poet's deep generalization about the essence of monarchy, the relation of the fate of a national leader and national hero with the destiny of their nation, the notion of individual and collective responsibility, author's philosophical views and ethical beliefs. Anthroponyms, introduced into the composition and content of poetical works, subjected to author's artistic reflection and reconsideration, contribute to creating notional and axiological content of the artistic concepts MONARCH, ARISTOCRAT, NATIONAL LEADER / NATIONAL HERO. Associative, evaluative, symbolic sense of anthroponyms provide conceptually significant information, the images based on the application of multifaceted potential of anthroponyms and the pragmatic power of lingual-aesthetic resources of the text constitute the ground for identifying the definite conceptual features. Thus, artistic actualization of the selected concepts develops within the relevant artistic and semantic planes, covering:

- socio-political aspects: national policy, national interests, ethnic self-identification;

- expression of philosophical and ethical concepts of patriotism, betrayal, truth, justice, faith, honesty, heroism;

- awareness of individual and collective destiny, individual and collective responsibility for the historical choice of the people and the nation.

Consequently, the basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept MONARCH include immorality, greed, sinfulness, hypocrisy; usurpation of power, death, dishonor, inglorious death. The conceptual features that are subjected to the profound artistic reflection from the perspective of their axiology are the ability or inability to become a true leader of the nation, tragic destiny, axiological dualism in assessing the role of the monarch in development of national history. The structure of the artistic concept ARISTOCRAT includes the features of political irresponsibility, betrayal of the national interests, the desire for wealth and satisfaction, pseudopatriotism, assimilation to the conditions of power, dishonor, and degradation of moral principles. The concept's axiology is predominantly negatively marked by its poetic representation through negatively connoted imagery.

The basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept NATIONAL LEADER include ambition for power, military deeds and aspirations. The conceptual features that are subjected to the profound artistic reflection from the perspective of their axiology and are the ground of author's ambivalent assessment are the ability to reach the status of the national hero or the transformation into the tyrant-ruler due to the betrayal of national interests and moral principles, hypocrisy, dishonesty. In the content of the concept, undeserved honours, destructive behaviour and conflict with one's own people, personal and as a result national catastrophe, death due to the punishment of God or people are foregrounded as dominating negative axiological conceptual features. The basic conceptual features of the content of the artistic concept NATIONAL HERO include divinity, greatness, sacred mission, immortal glory, valor, antagonism to the national pseudo-elite, political activity, heroism, glory, heroic sacrifice, glorious death on the battlefield. The conceptual features that are subjected to the deep artistic reconsideration from the perspective of their axiology and are potential possibility of metamorphosis from a national hero to a tyrant-ruler due to destructive behavior, conflict with the people, ambition, hypertrophied sense of self-worth.


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