Archetypes and Symbols in the Cognitive-Semiotic Text Model

• Main Author: Olga A. Turbina
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural State Pedagogical University 2020-06-01
• Series: Филологический класс
• Subjects: semiosis of texts; cognitive and semiotic models; fiction texts; archetypes; characters fairy tales.
• Online Access: https://filclass.ru/en/archive/2020/vol-25-2/arkhetipy-i-simvoly-v-kognitivno-semioticheskoj-modeli-teksta

The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of archetypes and symbols in the formation of the text matrix based on the example of literary fairy tale texts united by a common story line under the conditional name “Girl and the Beast” and published by different authors at different times and in different languages, and also on the example of the poem by M. Tsvetaeva “The Ice Tiara of the Mountains”. In particular, two well-known texts of fairy tales are compared: “The Scarlet Flower” by S. T. Aksakova – the eastern version of the plot – and “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie Le Prens de Beaumont – the western version of the plot. The symbolic poem by M. Tsvetaeva, that opens the cycle “Poems for an Orphan”, was attracted by the author of the proposed article due to the fact that it was written by the poetess under the influence of the motifs of the plot “Girl and the Beast”, and the same symbols were used in it. In the introductory part of the article, the author gives the basic definitions of the conceptual and theoretical apparatus of the cognitive-semiotic analysis of the text as a perfect complex sentintional sign. This sign is designed to express a holistic and significant in meaning semantic content and considers the mechanisms of the semantic and structural development of the text matrix as a kind of cognitive-semiotic model of the text. The article, using the example of a cognitive-semiotic analysis of three texts (two fairy tales and a poem), shows that archetypes and symbols, if used in a text matrix, are the basic discourse components of the text, which determine its semantic depth, volume and axiological content of the illocutionary and perlocutionary measurements (parameters). The author presents the results of a cognitive-semiotic analysis, showing that the archetypes and symbols used by the authors of the fairy tales “The Scarlet Flower” and “Beauty and the Beast” are semantic components of the oldest archetypal matrix as a cognitive axiological model of the archetypal situation. It is the archetypes and symbols of the plot “Girl and the Beast” used by M. Tsvetaeva in her symbolic poem “Ice Tiara of the Mountains” that, on the one hand, explain the semiosis of this text, allowing it to decode its meaning, which remains mysterious to researchers of the poetess’s work, and since another, they give a key to deciphering the meaning and reconstruction of no less mysterious image of the main character of the plot – the ‘reasured beast flower’.