Записки з романо-германської філології (Sep 2020)
RHIZOME IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE POSTMODERN TEXT FROM COGNITIVE AND SYNERGETIC PERSPECTIVES
Abstract
The article deals with theoretical and methodological bases of the rhizome in the postmodern text with the focus on the achievements of cognitive linguistics and synergetics. Chaotic and non-linear as well as temporal and spatial shifts in the fictional reality of the postmodern text enabled to elicit a fractal sequence consisting of 22 embedded narratives in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. From a cognitive linguistics perspective the rhizome model and fractal textual similarities in the conceptual network of mental spaces verified the synthesis of cognitive and synergetic principles of postmodern literary text analysis. This research claims that the rhizome as an ontological category of postmodern philosophy, on the one hand, participates in the conceptualization of fictional reality in the postmodern text, and on the other hand, it constitutes a fractal ensemble of sequential embranchments in the conceptual network of mental spaces. The technique of conceptual blending (Fauconnier, Turner, 2006) was used to give prominence to conceptual and semantic embranchments of FEAR concept in the conceptual network of mental spaces of the rhizome. The author comes to the conclusion that in the generic space the character’s narrative identity is defined as its organizing centre. In addition, the iteration process of embedded narratives resulted from minimally four input mental spaces as well as conceptual and semantic embranchments of FEAR, namely FEAR-1→HEADACHE (input 1), FEAR-2→VOICE (input 2), FEAR-3→MIRROR (input 3), FEAR-n (input n). Consequently, an ensemble of similarities in Cunningham’s The Hours represented by conceptual and semantic embranchments of FEAR in the conceptual network of mental spaces reveals the specific features of the rhizome from a cognitive linguistics perspective.
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