Rhythmic and syntactic structure of means to create material world image in V. Nabokov’s novel «Машенька» and its English translation «Mary»

Abstract

The present article attempts to analyze the rhythmic and syntactic structure of the original fragments involved in creating the image of the pension in V. Nabokov’s novel «Машенька» and its English version «Mary». The relevance of the research stems from the fact that despite the abundance of works devoted to the study of artistic image and individual writers’ style, they do not cover all possible aspects of analysis. In particular, there exist practically no contrastive studies revealing specific means to create material world image on the rhythmic and syntactic level based on the works written by bilingual authors. In addition, Russian and foreign philology lack studies devoted to considering the peculiarities of rhythmic and syntactic analysis of V. Nabokov’s literary works. The aim of the present article is to analyze the rhythmic as well as syntactic structure of the original fragments, creating the image of the pension as part of the material world in V. Nabokov’s novel «Машенька» and its English version «Mary». The objectives of the study include identifying the characteristics of the rhythmic as well as syntactic structure of the fragments in question to define the extent to which the translator manages to convey the features of the original structure. The following research methods are used: the method of slicing and splicing, structural-functional method, descriptive method and comparative method. In conclusion it should be emphasized that rhythmic and syntactic structure of the analyzed fragments is characterized by both extended and non-extended sentences, compound sentences with conjunctive, subordinate and non-conjunctive links, parenthetical insertions, homogeneous sentence members and adverbial participial phrases. The rhythm of the fragments in question varies from monotonous to gradual and alternating. To conclude, the results suggest that rhythmic and syntactic features of the original are not always taken into account by the translator, which is explained by the differences in the syntactic structure of the Russian and English languages.

Keywords

• theme-rheme relations
• functional sentence perspective
• parenthesis
• alliteration
• antithesis
• lexical repetition
• monotonous rhythm
• gradual rhythm
• alternating rhythm