Vyacheslav Syssoyev Page 1 6/21/2019

Summarizing and Analysing Fiction

It is impossible to cover all the existing modes of analysing a literary text in such a short and practically oriented manual. Text Analysis may be regarded as a separate linguistic discipline possessing its own rather an extensive inventory of methods and techniques as well as theoretical categories and concepts. This rather brief and schematic manual deals only with the main modules (stages) of linguo-stylistic and general philological text analysis, which are regarded to be most crucial for practical aims that a student of English faces in the process of professional training.

In our opinion, these modules (sections) can be presented in the following form and sequence.

1. General information about the text.

1. Setting and plot structure of the text.

2. Outline of the characters.

3. Message of the text.

4. Concluding remarks.

It can be by no means stated that such a pattern is the most successful of all existing nowadays. But at the same time one cannot question the fact that this scheme has a number of merits such as brevity, clearly marked structure and logical, deducible transitory zones joining its component parts together.

The author used in the given work the internationally acclaimed linguistic tactics of analysing fiction created by Ilya Romanovich Galperin, Irina Vladimirovna Arnold, Valeriya Andreyevna Kuharenko, and some other scholars of the Russian and American schools of decoding belles-lettres style texts.

The manual in question does not touch upon any serious theoretical problems of the contemporary text linguistics. Its ultimate goal is to help its user in forming some basic skills of decoding texts belonging to different fiction genres. The work may be used either as an element in the set of teaching materials for classroom work or for self-study.

Scheme of text analysis

To prepare a good analysis of the text one ought to follow the certain order, read commentaries and answer the following questions as fully as possible.

1. Presenting general information about the text

Broadly defined, the word fiction refers to any narrative, in prose or in verse, that is wholly or in part the product of imagination. As such, plays and narrative poems (poems that tell a story) can be classified as fiction, as can folktales, parables, fables, legends, allegories, satires and romances – all of which contain certain imaginative elements. Thus, imaginative literature is a way of treating subject matter, establishing the relationship between real life and the virtual life depicted in a work of fiction.

From the stylistic point of view, imaginative literature (belles-lettres style) is split into three groups (or substyles):

• Poetry (verse).

• Emotive prose.

• Drama.

Questions to answer:

1. 1. What is the title of (the book, novel, short story, poem, fairy tale, fantasy story, folk tale, lore, etc.)_?

Useful language: Today I am going to speak about ____ entitled _____. I’d like to tell you a couple of words about _____. I want to speak about ____. The title of ___ is ___. The ___ is entitled___...

1. 2. Who is the author of ____? (Who wrote __? Whom was ___ written by?) What is the author famous for?