Petkoglo Oksana

Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts

Allusion and its peculiarities, the problems of usage in modern literature

In the last decade the linguists take a great interest not into visible, formal signs of expression which report something supplementary to the primary content, but such signs which can be found only due to the deep intrusion into the context of work, its form and facture of units of language as well.

In this case the great interest is put on the research of such stylistic device as an allusion which gives the supplementary information only if all aims and purposes of this device were carefully analyzed: its structure and form which are given to allusion by the author [Чмиль 2000:4-8].

There is no clear definition of allusion; I. Galperin gives the following definition of allusion: «An allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing» [Galperin 1981].

Oxford Dictionary of Cotemporary English gives more general definition: ALLUSION – something that is said or written that refers to or mentions another person or subject in an indirect way [Oxford ALD: 2001].

Russian encyclopaedias consider allusion in wider aspect, although their definitions have much in common:

ALLUSION (from French allusion – a hint) – a hint to the commonly known literary or historical fact. The wide spread type of allusion is a hint to nowadays social and political realis in the works about historical past. Allusion on literary work is called reminiscence [ПМ 2001: 157-9].

ALLUSION ( from Latin allusio – a joke, a hint) – a stylistic figure, a hint by means of similarly sounding word or reference of commonly known real fact, historical event or literary work [ЛЭС: 1990].

Allusion presupposes certain elements in the text which function is to point out the connection of one text with another or a reference to particular historical, cultural and biographical facts. Such elements are called markers or allusive representatives and texts and facts of reality to which this reference is made are called denotatums of allusion.

Denotatums of allusion can be not only verbal texts but also “texts” of other kinds of art, first of all pictorials.

Such allusions are called intermedials and differ from textual allusions that their elements of pretext in the examined text are found distributed and do not create an entire statement or they may be given as implicit expressions. It should be noted that ambiguity is often considered as the defining feature of allusion, that’s why there is a tendency to use this term only in the case when we need some efforts and availability of special knowledge to comprehend. Simultaneously these elements of donor-text to which allusion relates to are organized such way that they prove to be knots of cohesion in semantic- composite structure of text.

We can consider allusion as a loanword of some element from the extraneous text, being a reference to the original text and a sign of situation which functions as a means for identification of definite fixed characteristics. Allusion, thus, becomes an intertext, an element of the existent text included into the created text. At the same time intertextuality, in the first place, explains the possibility itself of interpenetration of texts, the fact of their existence in the united space in the shape of single text, which represents the whole human culture where every intertextual relation is built on interpenetration of texts of different time layers and every new layer transforms the old one. In the case of allusion on the first position comes constructive intertextuality, which goal is to organize imported elements such way that they will be the knots of cohesion in semantic-composite structure of a new text.

It has been defined that for the positive characteristic of hero the author uses biblical allusions; to pass the bright sensational information the author uses mythological allusions, to a lesser extent - biblical and literary which inform the reader of substantive – intelligent information.

Thus, widely used type of allusions is historical allusions. This connects with the historical character of works. Such allusions are very easy for decoding as they are concrete and precise but at the same time this is the reason that they are less emotional and expressive. The most expressive and emotional are biblical and mythological allusions.

Deciphering of allusions as any other intertextual relation assumes that the author and the reader have some general knowledge, sometimes very specific. Quite often writers in their works create allusions appealing to the texts written in different languages and belonged to different literatures what gets complicated the search of denotatums of allusion [Елисеева 1998: 17-21]. Let’s see one example of allusion from chapter I, “Ulysses” by J. Joyce, where Buck Mulligan said to his friends:

- My twelfth rib is gone? He cried. I’m the Ubermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen [Joyce 1990:22].

There was no one rib at Adam, the first man. Mulligan declared that Adam is Nietzsche’s superman and the reference relates to chapter V from the book “Also sprach Zarathustra” (1883) by F. Nietzsche where said “…the most despicable of all …the last man”, from here comes that the first man is the most deserved that is a superman.

Allusion can create “pseudobiographical” base of reminiscent relation, also allusive elements connecting facts of life and the texts about them can be geographical names (toponyms). To carry an allusive sense might be given not only to the elements of lexical, but also grammatical, word-formative, phonetic and metrical levels of text organization. The ways of expression of this device can be orthography and punctuation as well. The markers of allusion can be also archaistic lexico-grammatical forms which reflect time gap between text- recipient and text- origin. Such substitution of modern forms to ancient, for example infinitive to aorist, gives to allusive expression timeless character. Allusive sense may be also given through dates brought to the text [Кругосвет 2003].

Allusion as any other stylistic device is informative and the level of its informativity is extremely high as we can see from all the essential notes characterizing informative report, the unit of language. Given stylistic device lets the readers get not only the information which is filled in the text but to know the author’s point of view on one or another describing phenomenon.

In the conclusion we would like to say that studying of such a stylistic device as an allusion is just on the first stage and that’s why the research of this question is of great interest for the further analysis.

Literature

1. Joyce, J.: Ulysses. - n.y.: Vintage International, 1990.

2. Nietzsche F.: Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein buch fur Alle und Keinen./ F. Nietzsche. – Insel Verlag, 1976.

3. Оxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English / A.S. Hornby. – Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.

4. Гальперин И. Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. - М.: Наука, 1981.

5. Елисеева В.В. Анализ художественного текста. – Санкт Петербург: Изд-во СПбГУ, - 1998.

6. Кругосвет: Энциклопедия “Кругосвет” / Под ред. А.Б. Давидсона, Т.Н. Сапожниковой // http://www.krugosvet.ru (27.03.2003).

5. ЛЭС: Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь / Гл. ред. В.Н. Ярцева, - М.: Сов. Энциклопедия , 1990.

6. ПМ: Постмодернизм: энциклопедия. - Минск: Интерпрессервис, 2001.

7.Чмиль И.И. К вопросу об информативности аллюзии и особенностях ее употребления. – М.: Наука, 2000.