SPECIFIC FEATURES OF IMAGERY AND SYMBOLIC SPACE OF W. GOLDING’S NOVEL TEXT «LORD OF THE FLIES»: COGNITIVE-SEMIOTIC ASPECT

Abstract

The article focuses on the specific features of imagery and symbolic space of the literary text of the English postmodernist writer W. Golding – his novel «Lord of the flies»g – with the aim of providing more profound interpretation of semantics of the literary text and specifying components of imagery and symbolics, selected by the author to realize his literary idea. As methodological instumentary the methods of cognitive-semiotic analysis is applied in this research that involves implementation of the elements of conceptual anlysis and methodology of conceptual tropes (metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron) reconstruction in the literary text. The analysis of the imagery space of the text carried out, that interpretes throught the prism of postmoderistic ideas the events of Nazistic Europe, spreading of fascism and the II World War tragedy, enabled delineation of range and spectre of referents and correlates of phenomena and demonstrated among metaphorically conceptualized ones the domination of the components of conceptual fields NATURAL PHENOMENON, HUMAN BEING, ATREFACT, being linked in the process of mapping – associated or contrasted to each other, while some of them acquiring the role of literary symbols in the context of analysed novel. Every phenomenon mentioned acquires specific axiological characteristics, that correspond the overall common mood of posrmodernist literary representation of events in the epoch of series of human tragedies, being interpreted in negative light. Verbally nature is depicted as predatory, hostile and dangerous, a human – as frightened and forlorn, full of painful emotions and horror. On the mental level such interpretation is accompanied by a series of cognitive processes (analogy, association, contrasting), which the author chooses corresponding metaphoric (menonymic) correlates for. Besides, it is accentuated by means of imagery and symboloc reinterpretation of artefact phenomena, that makes the emphasis on destructive impact of civilization and society on a human, contrasting the symbols of democracy and totalitarisn – a conch and «Lord of the flies», that ebmody the essence of social problems of pre-war and war times.