Филологический анализ текстов на английском языке

ФИЛОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ  

ТЕКСТОВ  

НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Е.М. БУТЕНИНА

Москва 
ИНФРА-М 

2025

УЧЕБНОЕ ПОСОБИЕ

УДК 80+811.111(075.8)
ББК 80:81.432.1я73
 
Б93

Бутенина Е.М.

Б93  
Филологический анализ текстов на английском языке : учебное 

 пособие / Е. М. Бутенина. — Москва : ИНФРА-М, 2025. — 206 с. — 
(Высшее образование). — DOI 10.12737/1855749.

ISBN 978-5-16-017451-8 (print)
ISBN 978-5-16-102693-9 (online)
Пособие знакомит студентов с англоязычной филологической терми
нологией и работами ведущих литературоведов Великобритании и США, 
чтобы привить базовые навыки анализа художественных текстов на английском языке. Пособие состоит из трех разделов, соответствующих классическому делению литературы на три рода: эпос (проза), лирика (поэзия) 
и драма. Каждое из шестнадцати занятий представляет собой определенный вопрос по интерпретации текста, от истории развития жанров 
до компонентов стиля. Краткое теоретическое описание текстуального 
элемента сопровождается практическим заданием, иллюстрирующим его 
употребление. Материалом для заданий послужили рассказы, стихотворения и пьесы английских и американских авторов XIX и ХХ веков, в некоторых случаях рассматриваются более ранние тексты. 

Предназначено для студентов филологического направления и всех 

интересующихся вопросами интерпретации текста на английском языке.

УДК 80+811.111(075.8)

ББК 80:81.432.1я73

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:

Малёнова Е.Д., кандидат филологических наук, доцент, доцент 

Омского государственного университета имени Ф.М. Достоевского;

Островская Е.С., кандидат филологических наук, доцент, доцент 

Высшей школы экономики

ISBN 978-5-16-017451-8 (print) 
ISBN 978-5-16-102693-9 (online)
© Бутенина Е.М., 2024

Оглавление

Предисловие...........................................................................................................5

PART I. Reading Fiction

UNIT 1. Fiction and Non-fiction. Genres I (Romance, Fantasy,  
Utopia, Dystopia, Picaresque, and Epistolary) ......................................................................... 8

Alan A. Milne 

The Rise and Fall of Mortimer Scrivens (1950) ................................................................13

UNIT 2. Genres II (Bildungsroman, Gothic Fiction,  
Science Fiction, and Mystery Fiction). Metafiction ...............................................................25

Woody Allen 

The Kugelmass Episode (1977) ..............................................................................................30

UNIT 3. Story (фабула) and Plot (сюжет) ...................................................................................41

Kate Chopin 

The Story of an Hour (1894) ...................................................................................................43

UNIT 4. Character. Characterization. Setting ............................................................................46

Ernest Hemingway 

Hills like White Elephants (1927) ..........................................................................................52

UNIT 5. Point of view. Types of Narrators ................................................................................57

William Faulkner 

A Rose for Emily (1930) ............................................................................................................59

UNIT 6. Author’s Narration and Character’s Narration .........................................................68

Virginia Woolf 

The Legacy (1940) ......................................................................................................................70

UNIT 7. Tone. Theme. Style (Part I). Diction (Vocabulary and Syntax)...........................78

Ring Lardner 

Haircut (1925) ...............................................................................................................................83

UNIT 8. Style (Part II). Imagery (Tropes) ......................................................................................94

James Thurber 

The Catbird Seat (1942) ............................................................................................................98

UNIT 9. Style (Part III). Imagery (Rhetorical Figures) ...........................................................107

Lewis Carroll 

Alice in Wonderland (1865) .................................................................................................109

Written Task. Option 1. Short Story Analysis ....................................................................... 121

Written Task. Option 2. Text to Film Comparison  
(Intermedial Trans lation Analysis) ..............................................................................................122

Written Task. Option 3. Book Trailer ....................................................................................... 123

PART II. Reading Poetry

UNIT 10. Poetic Forms and Genres. Phonetic Expressiveness ...................................... 126

Poetic Forms .............................................................................................................................................126
Poetic Genres ............................................................................................................................................129
Phonetic Expressiveness ......................................................................................................................132

UNIT 11. Open and Visual Poetry ............................................................................................. 136

Written Task. Poem Analysis ...................................................................................................... 142

PART III. Reading Drama

UNIT 12. Origins of Drama. English Drama before Shakespeare ................................. 144

UNIT 13. Shakespeare ................................................................................................................... 147

As You Like It (1599) ..............................................................................................................................150
Macbeth (1606) ........................................................................................................................................151
Hamlet (1601) ...........................................................................................................................................152
The Tempest (1611) ...............................................................................................................................153

UNIT 14. Modern English Drama .............................................................................................. 155

Agatha Christie 

Mousetrap ..................................................................................................................................160

UNIT 15. Modern American Drama ......................................................................................... 176

Susan Glaspell 

Trifles ............................................................................................................................................181

UNIT 16. The Theatre of the Absurd ....................................................................................... 195

Edward Albee 

The Sandbox ..............................................................................................................................198

Optional Written Task. Fan Fiction .......................................................................................... 204

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 205

Предисловие

Данное пособие основано на англоязычных работах по интер
претации текста — от классического труда английского писателя 
и критика Э.М. Форстера «Аспекты романа» (Aspects of the Novel, 
1927) до работ современных прозаиков и литературоведов: Милана 
Кундеры (The Art of the Novel, 2000), Франсин Проуз (Reading like 
a Writer, 2007), Гарольда Блума (The Anatomy of Influence: Literature 
as a Way of Life, 2011) и др. 

Цель пособия — формирование читательских компетенций, уме
ния распознавать и декодировать текстовые стратегии для реконструкции смысла произведения, заложенного автором. Про грамма 
дисциплины «Филологический анализ текстов на англий ском 
языке» предполагает разделение курса на лекции и практические 
занятия в разных семестрах, однако представляется необходимым основывать лекции на непосредственном практическом приме нении полученных теоретических знаний. Поэтому в пособии 
 крат кая лекция, содержащая задания для обсуждения на примере 
отрывков из больших текстов, предваряет произведение малой 
формы, которое наиболее ярко позволяет проиллюстрировать 
определенный теоретический аспект и при этом создать целостное 
художественное впечатление. Например, рассказ Алана Милна 
«Взлет и падение Мортимера Скрайвенса» (1950) представляет 
собой достаточно редкую эпистолярную форму, а рассказ Вуди 
 Аллена «Случай с  Кугельмасом» (1978) содержит металитературные элементы, и обе эти особенности служат для создания комического эффекта. 

Пособие состоит из шестнадцати уроков и освещает основные 

аспекты филологического анализа художественного текста: жанр, 
систему персонажей, место и время действия, особенности построения сюжета, организацию повествования (тип рассказчика, 
точка зрения и др.), стилистическое своеобразие. Ключевые термины выделены в тексте лекции жирным шрифтом и курсивом, 
и им даны определения.

Материалом для заданий послужили рассказы, стихотворения 

и пьесы английских и американских писателей ХХ в. Исключение 
составляют сонеты и отрывки из пьес Шекспира, а также главы 

из сказки Льюиса Кэрролла «Алиса в стране чудес» (1865) и рассказ Кейт Шопен «История одного часа» (1894). В одном случае 
текстом для обсуждения служит экранизация романа Барри Ансуорта «Моралите», позволяющая ознакомить студентов с основами 
интермедиального перевода (трансформации из одного канала- 
медиума в другой), в данном случае на примере преобразования 
вербального текста в аудиовизуальный.

Пособие позволяет познакомить студентов со всеми видами ху
дожественного текста — прозаического, поэтического и драматического. В качестве итогового задания по первой части курса (проза) 
предлагается одно из трех: 1) проанализировать рассказ (по своему 
выбору) в соответствии с планом, 2) сопоставить эпизод прозаического произведения с его воплощением на экране, 3) создать 
буктрейлер. Для выполнения заданий по второй и третьей частям 
пособия (поэзия и драма) предполагается также включение интермедиального контекста: при анализе стихотворения (по своему выбору) можно прокомментировать его песенное исполнение, а при 
анализе пьесы (по своему выбору) — ее театральное или кинематографическое воплощение. В качестве факультативного творческого 
задания студентам предлагается попробовать свои силы в форме 
фан-фикшн. 

В конце книги приводится список использованной литературы.
Пособие может быть полезно как студентам филологического 

направления, так и всем, кто интересуется вопросами интерпретации текстов на английском языке.

PART I 

Reading Fiction

UNIT 1 

Fiction and Non-fiction.  

Genres I (Romance, Fantasy, Utopia,  
Dystopia, Picaresque, and Epistolary)

Fiction is a term used to describe stories at least partially ima gined. 

It belongs to a larger category of communication called narrative, 
which is telling a story, a recounting of events in time. The distinguishing characteristic of narrative is the presence of a teller, a narrator 
(the narrator’s audience is called narratee). Literary fictional narrative 
is usually associated with novels and short stories. As a specific form 
of literature, fiction can be more accurately defined as a narrative told 
in prose. Unlike fiction, the non-fiction is supposed to be based on true 
events. Essays, journals, memoirs, diaries, documentaries, scientific papers, photographs, biographies, textbooks, travel books are all common 
examples of non-fiction works.

However, the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is not 

always clear. Fiction may include non-fictional elements, and nonfiction may include elements of imagery, hence the publishing 
and bookselling business even uses the term “literary non-fiction”. 
Autobiographical fiction and historical novel are instances of fiction 
that border on fact. Characteristically, Norman Mailer, the controversial American novelist and non-fiction prose writer, coined the 
term faction (fact + fiction) to refer to works written on this blurred 
boundary. The interpenetration of fiction and non-fiction is especially 
noticeable in the genres of autobiography and biography. 

Fiction can be divided into different subcategories: by length, 

it can be classified into short story (2,000–7,500 words), novelette 
(7,500–17,500 words), novella (17,500–50,000 words) and novel 
(50,000 words and more). Short stories will be the primary prose 
reading material in this book. The realist conventions of the short story 
begin their transformation into the modern form at the turn of the 
19th century. Many critics contrast the anti-Romantic realism of Maupassant with its sharp observation of external social detail and human 
behavior conveyed within a tightly drawn plot and the modern psycho

logical realism of early Joyce in which the action is mostly internal and 
expressed in an associative narrative built on epiphanic moments. 
Harold Bloom, American literary guru, believes that most modern short 
stories can be divided into rival traditions, Chekhovian-Henry Jamesian, 
that is impressionistic, questing for truth: start off suddenly, end elliptically, or Kafkan-Borgesian, that is phantasmogorian, turning the 
truth inside out. 

By content fiction can be classified into several narrative forms 

or genres. As Alastair Fowler says in his comprehensive study Kinds 
of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes, 
the conventions of each genre constitute its “grammar” that allows us 
to “read” the genre and works written in it [Fowler, p. 20]. The major 
genres that continue to influence contemporary literature include 
(in order of appearance): 

 
• romance and fantasy (Homer, circa 850 B.C.)

 
• utopia (Plato, circa 360 B.C.) 

 
• dystopia (Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1921)

 
• picaresque novel (Cervantes, 1605)

 
• epistolary novel (Samuel Richardson, 1741)

 
• Bildungsroman (Goethe, 1796)

 
• Gothic fiction (Anna Radcliffe, 1794)

 
• science fiction (Mary Shelly, 1818)

 
• mystery/detective fiction (Edgar Allan Poe, 1841).

Romance is a narrative form that includes the following elements: 

adventure, love, mysterious circumstance, quests. Some scholars during 
and since the Renaissance have maintained that Homer’s The Odyssey 
is a prototypical romance, though a more widely spread opinion is that 
the romance originated in the 12th century France, where it was first 
used exclusively to refer to verses about knightly adventure, courtly 
love and chivalric ideals. By the seventeenth century, the term was use 
to refer to any medieval romance, whether in verse or prose and regardless of the country of origin. The meaning of romance has broadened 
considerably over time, especially over the 20th century. Today, romance usually refers to a fictional account of passionate love prevailing 
against social, economic, or psychological obstacles; it might have elements of the supernatural and quest, but any plot that revolves around 
love can be characterized as a romance. Love stories whose characters, 

situations, or events are given a historical setting are often referred 
to as historical romances, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet 
Letter (1850), Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) or Margaret 
Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936). In film romance evolved into 
a popular hybrid genre of romantic comedy.

Fantasy is a genre that commonly uses magic and other superna
tural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. Many 
works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic 
and magical creatures are common. Thus, the history of fantasy and 
the history of literature are intertwined and the earliest examples date 
back to Ancient Greek The Odyssey. However, the question of whether 
the writers believed in the possibilities of the marvels they described 
(for example, Shakespeare in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is crucial for distinguishing fantasy in its modern sense. Classic children’s 
fantasies include Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) 
and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1902). Today, the so called high fantasy 
genre is predominantly of the medievalist form, the all-time classic 
being J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Several other series, such 
as C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea 
books contributed to the popularity of the genre, which witnessed 
 another worldwide success in the twenty first century with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

Utopia originated in Plato’s Republic (around 375 B.C.) that de
scribed an ideal state ruled by a “philosophy king” and probably inspired Thomas More’s legendary political satire Utopia: On the Best 
State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia (1516). More’s 
book originally intended to mock the English king Henry VIII but 
gave birth to an entire genre of fiction exploring the possibilities 
of “perfect” society. The offshoot of utopia is dystopia, a genre presenting a grim prospect on a future as in Yevgeny Zamyatin We (1921), 
Aldous Huxley’s The Brave New World (1932) or George Orwell’s 1984 
(1948). By showing a possible prospect of disaster, dystopia aims 
to shock people out of their complacency and sound a warning about 
the danger of some human actions (such as totalitarian threats, unconstrained scientific development, environment exploitation) likely to 
lead to a catastrophe. 

Discussion Task 1. Read the extract from Aldous Huxley’s The 

Brave New World and fill out the following table. 
What colour do you think Betas can be wearing? 
Check in the text of the novel and discuss how 
the colours are related to the features of each 
caste. Which details of this hypnopedia (sleepteaching) do you find the most frightening? 

Caste
Colour of the Uniform
Characteristics

Alpha
Beta
Gamma
Delta
Epsilon

Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director 

cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight 
of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. 
There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur, 
as of very faint voices remotely whispering.

A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the 

Director.

“What’s the lesson this afternoon?” he asked.
“We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,” she answered. 

“But now it’s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.”

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and 

relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. 
There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, 
bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.

“Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated 

a little louder by the trumpet.”

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. 

The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

“…all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the 

middle of a sentence, “and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t 
want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re 
too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is 
such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.”

There was a pause; then the voice began again.
“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, 

because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, 
because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the 
Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta 
children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. 
And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able…”

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only 

its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.

“They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they 

wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and 
twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go 
on to a more advanced lesson.”

*****

Picaresque novel, originated in in Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605), 

is usually a realistic and satirical first-person narrative describing 
episodic adventures of a picaro (Spanish: “roguish hero”). Examples 
of wholly or partly picaresque narratives include Mark Twain’s 
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Ilya Ilf’s and Yevgeni Petrov’s 
The Twelve Chairs (1928) and The Little Golden Calf (1931), Saul 
Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Vladimir Voinovich’s 
The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1969) 
and Umberto Eco’s Baudolino (2000). 

Epistolary narration, i.e. a narration in letters, originated in Sa
muel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1741), the first mature 
novel in English. This technique allows readers to “hear” more intimately the voices of characters and is sometimes used in modern fiction, 
for example, in Alan A. Milne’s short story The Rise and Fall of Mortimer 
Scrivens (1950) or Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1982).

Text 1. Read Alan A. Milne’s epistolary short story The Rise 

and Fall of Mortimer Scrivens and discuss the following 
questions supporting your answers with quotes:

1. 
How are the personalities of the correspondents gradually revealed 
in their letters? 

2. 
How is the tone of the letters changing as the conflict complicates?