Special Features of the Framework Text in the Novel “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal

Abstract

The authors of the article analyze Stendhal’s novel “The Red and the Black” from the standpoint of intertextuality. The main attention is focused on the paratextuality of the work, that is, on the relationship of the text with the titles, epigraphs, preface and afterword – its frame. The novel has all the elements of a framework: a title complex, a framework text, a division into chapters, parts.

The text is structurally divided into two parts and chapters (2 and 75 respectively). The element of the framework is the content at the end of the text (both in the original and in various translations). The authors of the article note that the content is used by Stendhal with a traditional purpose. The elements of the framework text in the novel are "Preface" – "To the reader" (explanation about the time of publication and writing of the work) and "Afterword" – section L, the author's notes related to artistic fiction. It is the "Afterword" that is connected with the genre subtitle of the novel and the main Epigraph, they form the additional frame of the text.

The authors pay special attention to the headings – to the main one and to each chapter (71 of 75 chapters are titled). The names of the chapters in Stendhal's novel "The Red and the Black" are diverse in terms of substantive and factual information: they indicate the characters of the work, convey chronotopic information, name the theme, concentrate the main idea of the work, present the plot of the work or name one culminating event, express the author's assessment of the work and its characters, etc. The headingss analyzed, the writer is noted to use various artistic means to nominate the chapters of the novel, which activates the reader's perception, creating a certain obstacle for understanding, and arouses interest: titles-symbols, titles-metaphors, titles-epithets. In such headings, the meaning is reinterpreted, expanded. Besides, extratextual information is used, when the essence of the heading is not only the content of the novel, but its associative connection with other aesthetic objects.

In general terms, the authors analyze the epigraphs to both parts of the novel, 71 chapters, and explain the writer's use of "own" and "other people's" quotations in the inscriptions before the text, their linguistic design and functions.