The Fine Art in Structure of John Fowles’ Novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/pytlit2013.88.340Keywords:
John Fowles, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, artistic context, fine art, painting, intertextuality, intermediality, intermedial analysis, Pre-RaphaelitesAbstract
The article deals with the role of descriptive context in the structure of John Fowles’ novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. Based on the intermedial analysis there was analyzed the semiotics of fine art in the novel, in particular an appeal to the Pre-Raphaelite art and the Renaissance painting. It was found that John Fowles’ works tend to use the poetics of different kinds of arts: the writer appeals to painting, operates its sign system, recodes signs of visual art by the language of a literary text, expanding the context of its understanding, interpretation and reception.
There were studied intermedial connections of the novel with other works of arts. It was found that in the writer’s novels and stories were presented the most clearly visual arts in terms of their classification for the form of sensory perception. Among the arts in relation to time and space are dominated spatial arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, decorative arts. The study focuses on the fine art, especially painting.
The descriptive context is multivariation and multifunctional, it has manifestations on a level with the intermedial citation of painting, ekphrasis in landscape or portrait sketches, paintings of visualizing of characters’ imagination, allusions to works of art, etc., explicitly and implicitly represented in the texts. Intermedial analysis allows us to see the relationship of John Fowles’ novel with the Pre-Raphaelite art. In the character context the descriptive component increases literary, cultural and historical contextual characteristics. Introduced in the structure of a literary text the descriptive context on the semiotic level forms the axiological context. The system of ethical and aesthetic values of different cultural eras is extrapolated through the artistic context.
So, the article studies the intermedial novel connections with other works of art. The descriptive context of the novel is manifested at different levels of poetic works, has explicit and implicit nature. The appeal to the fine art in “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” relates the novel to other works of the author, in which the theme of art is developed and brings to the broader context of the study of other arts, including arts and crafts, which are provided with if not the most attention in the text.
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