Publication details
Naujas požiúris i Krisijono Donelaičio "Metu" kompozicija
| Title in English | A New Approach to the Composition of "The Seasons" by Kristijonas Donelaitis |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Kristijono Donelaičio reikšmés |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | Donelaitis; Donalitius; Lithuanian literature; Lithuania; Baltic languages; Baltic literatures; philology; literature; composition; text structure |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The article deals with questions on the composition of The Seasons by Donelaitis: the author himself did not leave specific instructions about the generic definition of this text nor on its structure and there exist two contradicting compositional concepts of The Seasons. The first was introduced by Ludwig Rhesa in 1818 and regards them as a cohesive whole, which is to be read from “Joys of Spring” to “Cares of Winter”. Whereas the second conception (forged by Nesselmann in 1869) postulates, that four Donelaitis’ seasons are autonomous poems. The article shows, that neither of both conceptions solves the problem of the composition of The Seasons. A new approach to the subject is proposed by analysing the isotopic structure of the discourse and by identifying the principles of its paradigmatic and syntagmatic cohesion. As the article shows, paradigmatic cohesion of this text is based on the opposition between ethical categories “virtue” and “vice”, which are embedded in the deep layers of the narrative and thus undelays and semantically unifies different events on the surface of the text. The “stories told” within The Seasons may vary, but the main concept remains, thus producing our perception of the cohesiveness of this text. The syntagmatic structure of The Seasons is much looser: there is no unifying plot or macro-compositional plan in The Seasons. However this does not mean, that single episodes are connected chaotically. Along with the contrastive oppositions in The Seasons (e.g. devote and modest birds are opposed to the greedy and coursing lord) the article introduces and explains a new principle of how one episode is connected to the other by specific “syntagmatic seams”. The results of our analysis show, that The Seasons build a cohesive cyclic structure without given points of the beginning or end. The inner coherence of this cycle is based on the paradigmatic level of the narration, whereas syntagmatic cohesion has a less significant role. |
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