THE FRENCH ONIERIC NARRATIVE THROUGH SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF “AURÉLIA OU LE RÊVE ET LA VIE” BY GÉRARD DE NERVAL)

Abstract

The present research paper has outlined and has analyzed the most revealing linguistic narrative and cognitive mechanisms of the oneiric narrative formatting, found in the 19th century French fictional text formation. Exploring the text-forming potential of the “altered states of consciousness” as sign-language structures reflecting the narrative strategies in French prose works has allowed us to trace the dynamics of the writers’ narrative thinking as the representatives of a particular historical and cultural era. The 19th century French fictional texts are those examples of the writers’ artistic thinking that reflect human beliefs, thoughts and feelings of each historical period and consequently, it analysis is necessary to reconstruct the mechanisms of the transformation of cognitive structures into sign language forms. For the purpose of determining the most noticeable trends in the oneiric narrative formation and formatting, the main regularities of generating and unfolding the narrative through stylistic figurativeness in terms of the semiosis of narrative techniques, techniques or tactics of the French fictional text formation have been clarified. From the standpoints of linguistics, semiotics, as well as the acquisition of semantics of possible worlds and stylistics, it has been singled out that the 19th century French fictional text formation is distinguished by the construction and formatting of onieric narrative reality, characterized by the multiplicity of images. From the point of view of semiotic approach, the notable feature of the 19th century French fictional text formation are the writer “altered states of consciousness”, who act as referents of the reflection and construction of onieric narrative reality. The paper also has revealed that the French onieric narrative is constructed in the homodiegetic narrator discourse of dreams and dreamy visions that is related to the linguistic personality of the French writer himself. It has been established that in the novel “Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie”, the textual means of creating the quasi-reality are onieric lexical units and numerous means of stylistic figurativeness with the seme of ‘imaginary / impossible’.