of the book
by Valery P. Belyanin
"MODELS OF THE WORLD IN FICTION "
Moscow, Trivola, 2000.

The work presents an original typology of literary texts based on their emotional and semantic dominants. It solves the problem of verbal structuring of accentuated consciousness in literary text. Created in the paradigm of cognitive psycholinguistics and psychopoetics it introduces new - psychiatric - approach to text.

The first chapter of the work describes some non-traditional methods of analysis of literary text, including objective (L.Vygotsky) and subjective psychological, psychoanalytic, europathological ones. Scientific works where psychiatric analysis of characters and authors was made are also reviewed. Rare and unknown works on europathology, published in Sverdlovsk in 1924-1928 are cited. Results of linguistic analysis of the speech of accentuated and mentally ill persons in the frames of psychiatric linguistics are drawn.

The second chapter is devoted to typological approach to fiction. Works of D.N.Ovsyanniko-Kulikovsky, F.Shiller, R.de Gourmond, K.Yung, R.Muller-Freinfels et al. are viewed upon. The notion of the dominant (A.Uhtomsky) of a text is introduced as emotional and semantic dominant that is the basis of the author's concept of the text.

The third chapter describes psycholinguistic typology of literary texts based on finding out their emotional and semantic dominant of accentuated type. Psychiatric typology of personality is borrowed from the works of P.Gannushkin and K.Leongard.

Thus, "light" ("svetliye") texts being based on paranoia, depict an active fight for justice of an honest and responsible person. The key-words of such texts are as follows: 'clear',' 'transparent', 'duty', 'destiny', 'fight', 'enemy', 'eyes', 'heart', 'warmth', 'father' et al.

"Dark" (or "simple") ("tyemniye" or "prostiye") texts, being based on epileptic consciousness, constitute the largest part of literary texts in general. Their dominant is manifested in the following frames of texts: a simple but aggressive hero is fighting against clever and thus dangerous enemy. Physiological level of a man prevails. The following semantic groups of the words appear in such texts: 'double', 'darkness', 'anguish', 'laughter', 'size', 'falling down', 'water', 'unpleasant smell', 'body'. They are evidently based on different deviations of perception and demeanor, typical for neurological disorder. The receptive aspect of such texts is also viewed upon.

"Sad" ("pechalniye") texts are singled out as based upon depression as a state of low emotions, physical weakness and timidity of a person. The following semantic components are typical for "sad" texts: 'quiet', 'pleasant smell', 'loss of money', 'death', stone', 'cold'. Psychologically antonymous to the previous ones are "merry" ("veseliye") texts that are based upon maniac state of a person who always has high spirits and enormous plans, is very talkative and friendly.

"Merry" texts have the following semantic components: 'together', 'friends', 'luck', 'gangsters', 'travelling', 'flight', 'a lot of money', 'erudition', 'physical strength'. Such type of texts is implemented in adventure stories and comedies as well.

"Beautiful" (or better "beauteous" - "krasiviye") texts are based on histrionics as a type of demeanor characterized by demonstrativeness, capriciousness, artistic behavior and pseudology of an accentuated person. "Beautiful" texts are full of such symbols as 'color', 'appearance of a person', 'gestures', 'feelings and emotions', 'humiliations and sufferings', 'relatives', 'comparison with an animal'.

"Mixed" texts are also represented in the book "Introduction to Psychiatric Literary Criticism". There are "sad-and- merry" (cyclotimia), "beautiful-and-dark", "sad-and-dark", "complex" (schizophrenia) and others. On the basis of the elaborated theory of emotional and semantic dominant a hypothesis about the popularity of best seller is introduced. The analysis of every type of text is illustrated with a sufficient amount of examples from Russian and world literature. Each type of texts represents a verbalized model of a rather closed life-world of accentuated character, having its own peculiarities in lexical-and-semantic and stylistic attitude. As matter of fact, the analysis made puts forward the problem of individual and typological verbal and cognitive types of languages of literary text as manifestations of cognitive structures of the author as a linguistic personality.

The fourth chapter is devoted to the receptive aspect of literary text, where psycholinguistic peculiarities of text perception are reviewed and bibliopsychological approach of N.Rubakin - his author-text-recipient conception - is drawn.

The fifth chapter is devoted to the experimental study of text perception with the use of "Projective Literary Test" (800 testees).

The work has a practical value. Thus, the results gained could be used for solving the problem of identification of personality by his speech, "Projective Literary Test" can be used as a diagnostic instrument. The results gained can be useful not only for all those who love and study literature and art, philologists and literary critics, but psychologists, clinicists, psychotherapists and specialists in mental lexicon and natural language processing.

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