National Research University Higher School of Economics Journal of Language & Education Volume 3, Issue 1, 2017
Orlova, T. (2017). Chronopotic information of non-dialogic part of American dramatic text (based on the 20th century American plays). Journal of Language and Education, 5(1), 34-44. doi:10.17323/2411-7390-2017-3-1-34-44
Chronopotic information of non-dialogic part of American dramatic text (based on the 20th century American plays)
Tatiana Orlova
Ogarev Mordovia State University
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tatiana Orlova, Department of English Language and Literature, Ogarev Mordovia State University, 68 Bolshevistskaya Str., Saransk, Republic of Mordovia, Russian Federation, 430005. E-mail: taorlova@inbox.ru
It is well-known that any dramatic text consists of two main blocks - dialogic part represented by actors" speech and non-dialogic part represented by author's indications (remarks). This paper seeks to analyze the informative potential of non-dialogic part of a dramatic text from the point of view of its content-related and semantic characteristics, and in its peculiarity is considered as a distinctive feature of American linguocultural area. The topic of the contents of non-dialogic part is rendered by chronotope and anthropocentrical information, which reveal the point that a dramatic text is encoded on verbalization of extra-linguistic space/time and of a human being. The special attention is paid to spatiotemporal indications as the constituents of chronotopic information. Alongside, the interior description and scenery description as subtypes of spatial locuses are subjected to the research as well.
The investigation was carried out on the bases of 45 dramatic texts created by American authors of the XX century. The research methods were component data mining, descriptive analytical method and way of linguistic comparison. The results showed that the distinctive feature of the American plays of the first half of the XX century was the presence of large pieces of text and specific information in spatiotemporal indications in non-dialogic part. Furthermore, the results allowed to affirm that during the reading of modern American dramatic texts it might seem that as though authors forgot about original orientation of plays on stage performance. Some of the spatiotemporal indications were bound not to be embodied by a stage director and were available only for a reader, who in this aspect was set equal with a reader of a prosaic text. As for a viewer, they are highly unlikely to perceive author's descriptions of the scenery in full informational content and consequently they would face a definite informatory gap.
Keywords: dramatic text, non-dialogic part, absolute beginning of the text, chronotope, spatiotemporal indications, spatial locus, semiotic system
Linguistics having mastered texts of various kinds and genres is starting (although rather rapidly) to diffuse a problem of its studies on dramatic text (DT). If to address to the works in this area it is possible to distinguish the following directions in its study: communicative organization of DT (Ishchuk -Fadeeva, 2001; Karimova, 2004; Kormilina, 2004; Zhurcheva, 2006), correlation of verbal and non-verbal means of communication of DT (Balyagina, 1993; Lozhechnikova, 2004; Orlova, 2007; Chubarova, 2008), diverse problems of drama speech (Zaitzeva, 2002;
Tislenkova, 2004; Borger, 2004), categorical properties of DT (Gregorowicz-Cap, 1998; Sintotzkaya, 2003; Chernetz, 2004), prosodic organization of DT (Magill, 1985; Hess-Luettich, 1991; Hadar, 1997), the place of DT with literary studies (Meserve, 1966; Veltrusky, 1977; Schroeder, 1989; Mitchell, 1995), embodiment of DT on the scene (Bentley, 1967; Briggs, 1983; Dessen, 2000; Elam, 2002). Representatives of different approaches to the study of DT have an undivided opinion that communicative direction of DT can be stratified on three addressings: DT - a reader, DT - a
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viewer and DT - an intermediate group (actors, stage directors). So this paper is focused on the study of peculiar type of DT called «Lesedrama» (Zhurcheva, 2006), which is oriented on readers. And this type of DT has not been investigated at all in linguistics terms and requires careful examination. Besides this the researches of DT admit that the comprehensive revealing of informational potential of DT is impossible without consideration of that part of the text which located outside of the actors" speech and comprises the wide range of elements forming its structure. In spite of the fact that DT has already become the object of linguistic investigation, it can be stated that there is much to analyze in revealing of its forming models and comprehend some prominent features in researching specificity of DT creation. Immediacy of the topic under investigation is determined by the increasing interest of modern linquistics to a person's phenomenon and his communicative activity in various spheres of society, including aesthetic sphere, where DT can be regarded as complex phenomenon of oral lore. The novelty of the paper is defined by the extended research of chronotope, which is supposed to be formal and content-related category of the text and defines characters" image. In this connection it is relevant to point out that the study of semantic and structural peculiarities of interior and scenery descriptions is extremely important, because these descriptions are the objects forming the general picture of the locality of the characters and their actions in DT.
Materials and Methods
Theoretical Framework
Text linguistics investigating the rules of text building often leaves out of its view the newest tendencies defining patterns of text modeling of this or that type of text, aiming only at the fixed regularities of total ordering. Meanwhile, consideration of such tendencies is highly essential, whereas the revealing of interconnection of the general and the specific features in rules of text building provides a thorough insight into the studied fact, integrating linguoculturological aspect in research of language and text phenomena. Review process of DT, depending on specific conditions of its creation, in many ways determines research approach to its study. Such idea is relevant in relation to DT, typified by American plays of the XX century. It is widely accepted that any DT has a specific structure which is characterized by particular elements (dramatis
personae, characters" remarks, author's remarks) and is meant for a stage performance. A linguist, proceeding to the study of DT, starts dealing with a typographical edition of the text and in this aspect he is regarded as the researcher of a specific kind of DT named as Lesedrama. Communicative orientation of DT is multi-attribute and its consideration plays into the problem of text dialogics. This term was introduced by D. Bialostosky. The main point of text dialogics is in the idea that any text is meant for its own addressee and is created on the expectation of the addressee's perceiving. Bearing in mind the multiple addressing of DT (DT - a reader, DT - a viewer and DT - an intermediate group (actors, stage directors)) and orientation of the modern American plays on a reader to a greater extent than on a viewer, it is logical to state that correlation of dialogic part and non-dialogic part as manifestation of direct author's indications (remarks) ultimately depicts the evolution of genre and descriptive background assumptions in DT. Informative range of author's remarks which form non-dialogic part of DT can be rated into following directions: basic spatiotemporal indications (at the beginning of the acts and scenes); small indications, which are developed in the text in specification; communicative indications of the characters. A remark as a component brought by historical development of drama, as opposed to monologue or dialogue, is inseparably connected with evolution of the form of epic narration. American plays of the previous century can be regarded as the good example of this thought, because it is possible to say that during the reading of them it might seem that as though the author forgets about their original orientation on stage performance. Some of the author's indications are bound not to be conveyed by a stage director and are available only for a reader, who in this aspect is set equal with a reader of a prosaic text. As for a viewer, they are highly unlikely to understand chronotopic data in full informational content and consequently they will fail in comprehension of it. This process lets us speak about gradual prosaism of author's indications in American plays of the XX century and about the blurring of the lines between prosaic text and DT. It can mean that DT is nearing prosaic text in this aspect.
Research
English dramatic text is studied in this paper in its written form, which it acquires in print publishing. It is important to take into account graphic presentation of the text which is more timely in the point that it is
printed in different types of fonts and its non-dialogic part is performed in italics, so American dramatic text presented in modern printed versions, having specific structural and graphic markedness of its non-dialogic part, lets actualize investigation of its informative potential separately from the information of the whole text.
DT has multiple addressing and varies informative potential of its non-dialogic part according to the certain recipient. A recipient-reader, dealing with specific manifestation of DT known as Lesedrama, in modern conditions perceives the whole range of informative intricacies defined by the terms of literal communication. The non-dialogic part of DT, traditionally performed by author's indications, at the present time has increased in its volume housing superfluous information, which can be perceived only by a recipient-reader in its full informative potential. The superfluous information in author's indications (remarks) is presented by the various data about location of the actions, scenery, descriptions of the physical appearance of the characters, their movements on the scene and their emotional state. All these informative points form the content-related characteristics of non-dialogic part and bearing in mind the given statement the purpose of our investigation is to analyze chronotopic information as the constituent of content-related characteristics of non-dialogic part of American DT of ХХ century. The rest of the kinds of content-related information of DT give the great source for further investigation on the bases of DT. Achievement of the objective sets the following goals: to distinguish the types in chronotope marking, to analyze the correlation of the landscape descriptions (as a subaspect of spatial locus) with temporal indications, to classify spatial locuses, to state compositional constituents of scenery description, to make conclusions of typological nature about peculiarities of chronotope information in non-dialogic part of modern American DT. The hypothesis is represented by the thesis that at present time traditional methods of dramatic text building are undergoing active reorganization marked with specific distinctness in this or that linguocultural area. This fact has the great linguistic significance which lies in determined influence done by modern society on modeling of text building informative structure, serving separate spheres of modern literary communication.
Spatial and temporal indications of non-dialogic part of DT are presented and analysed as the constituent
elements of chronotopic information from the point of view of their structure and informative value. They are discussed in three sections, namely, spatiotemporal indications, interior description, which forms the subtype of spatial locus and scenery description which forms the other subtype of spatial locus as well. The investigation is carried on bases of 45 dramatic texts created by American authors of the ХХ century. The three main methods are applied to achive the goals set in the paper:
- component data mining (for revealing components which form the content of non-dialogic part)
- descriptive analytical method (for characterization of informative lines)
- method of linquistic comparison (for finding common and specific features in the structure of non-dialogic part in DT within ХХ century).
Results and Discussion
One of the most typical feature of drama is the presence of the distinctly marked chronotope, located at the absolute beginning of the text. It is known that at its absolute beginning drama contains chronotope data divided into acts and scenes. But within the time this feature can shift from the typical to the changeable one. In this connection it is reasonable to reveal content-related aspect of the chronotope data in non-dialogic part of dramatic text and to retrace the changes in information representation. It is necessary to mention that in our paper the absolute beginning of dramatic text means the very beginning of text information located after the second mention of the heading.
In a text of modern American drama it is possible to distinguish the following types in chronotope marking (are listed in the order of frequency of usage):
1. separated naming units of location and time of an action:
THE PLACE
Nick's Pacific Street saloon, Restaurant, and Entertainment Palace at the foot ofEmbarcadero, in San Francisco. A suggestion of room 21 at The New York Hotel, upstairs, around the corner.
THE TIME
Afternoon and night of a day in October, 1939 (Saroyan, 1941, p. 920).
2. indication of location and time of an action for
each act:
SCENES
The action of the play takes place at Camp Kare-Free, in the Berkshires, during August ACT ONE SCENE I
Teddy's Bungalow. About noon. SCENE II
The Dinning Room. Ten minutes later. (Kober, 1941,p. 680)
3. general indication of location for all the acts and indication of the precise time for each act:
SCENE
Tony's farmhouse in the Napa Velley, California ACT ONE
Morning, in early summer ACT TWO
Evening. Same day ... (Howard, 1941,p. 4).
4. general indication of location and the year for all the acts and indication of more precise time for each act:
SCENES
The entire action takes place in Marion Froude's studio in New-York City. The time 1932. ACT ONE
About five o'clock of an afternoon in November ACT TWO
Afternoon, three weeks later ... (Berhman, 1941,p. 206).
5. united indication of location and time of the action for the whole text of the play:
PLACE:
The play takes plays in Moscow, March 1985, and Talmenka, Siberia, 1992 (Kushner, 1995, p. 133).
6. indication of action location for each scene and absence of time indication:
SCENES PART ONE SCENE ONE
The Sunday School SCENE TWO A Fish Fry SCENE THREE
A Garden ... (Connelly, 1941, p. 145).
7. indication of action time and absence of location indication of the action:
Time - the present (Albee, 1970, p. 19).
It is interesting to point out that in more than one-act dramatic texts the distinctly marked chronopote data at the absolute beginning of the text can be duplicated at the beginning of an act or a scene, being added by some details and extended by descriptions of stage settings. For instance, there is a clearly marked chronotope at the beginning of the whole text in three-act play of E. O'Neill «Ah!:
SCENES
ACT ONE
Sitting-room of the Miller home in a large small-town in Connecticut - early morning, July 4th, 1906
ACT TWO
Dinning room of the Miller home - evening of the same day ... (O'Neill, 1941, p. 278).
It is worthy to note that the mentioned information about the time and location of the action is indicated one more time at the beginning of the second act:
SCENE: Dinnig-room of the MILLER home - a
little after 6 o'clock in the evening of the same day.
The room is much too small for medium-price ...
(O'Neill, 1941, p. 290).
Such repetition of chronotope data allows a reader to perceive text information as a cohesive unity without separation from reading of the following acts and scenes and without resumption to the very beginning of the text to recollect the location and the time of the described action.
It seems important to mention that in the dramatic texts of the second half of the XX century the spatiotemporal data are relocated into the non-dialogic part of the text, which is situated at the beginning of the acts and scenes, and are followed by the descriptions of stage settings. Thus it is possible to state the peculiar packing of chronotope information. The plays of (1) T. Williams «The Case of the Crushed Petunias» and u (2) M. Valency «Feathertop» illustrate this point of view:
1. SCENE: The action of the play takes place in the Simple Notion Shop, owned and operated Miss Dorothy Simple...
The play starts in the early morning. Miss Simple, very agitated for some reason, has just opened her little shop (Williams, 1994,p. 11).
2. The kitchen is a low-beamed room, the largest
room in a small New England house of colonial design. It is the year 1770. There are cobwebs in the corners... (Valency, 1994, p. 52).
Apart from that in a few modern American drama (for example, (1) S. Howard «They Knew What They Wanted» and (2) F. Nagy «Trip's Cinch») correlation of the landscape descriptions (as a subaspect of spatial locus) with temporal indications can be observed:
1. In the beginning of the play - it begins in summer -the grapes on the porch vines are small and green. In the last act - three months having elapsed -they are large and purple (Howard, 1941,p. 5).
2. Beyond the sand, there is a clear, black night sky, stretching as far as the eye can see (Nagy, 1994, p. 343).
Bearing in mind the informative aspect of the first example, it is necessary to assume that a producer of the play «They Knew What They Wanted» deals with a tricky task to express text chronopote by the means of another semiotic system, dividing it into two acts, while a reader perceives it immediately.
It appears that in dramatic texts of the second half of the XX century, temporal indications are added by various data. For instance, in the play of G. Gonzales «Gaucho» besides of temporal indications there is additional information about the air temperature and brightness of the daylight (it is impossible to ignore the fact, that the implementation of the air temperature by means of a stage is highly difficult):
HOUR: Late summerafternoon, warm temperatures, around 6 p.m. bright daylight (Gonzales, 1994, p. 98).
But one cannot affirm that such specification of temporal indications is typical for the modern American dramatic texts, because the information about the time of a day (late afternoon, early morning, about 9 o'clock that night) or month/season of a year (autumn day, an afternoon in November) is presented more often.
Alongside with specification in temporal indications of stage actions there are other untypical features of American drama (1) abstract temporal locus and (2) extension of its borderlines:
(1) TIME: May be never. May be tomorrow (Klein, 1994, p. 73).
(2) TIME: Slavery Days (Douglass, 1994, p. 139).
Description of the interior occupies fairly big place
in non-dialogic part of the modern American plays. Doubtless research interest is aroused by author's remarks which have undergone compositional changes,
in other words author's remarks (with description of interior in their structure) are characterized by particular expansion in size and can occupy from a half of a page up to a page and a half of printed text. In this connection the study of semantic and structural peculiarities of interior description has its remarkable properties.
Distinctive feature of the American plays of the first half of the XX century is the presence in the interior description structure of the author's characteristic for the whole scenery in general. In a greater degree the author's appraisal of the interior is common for a prosaic text, because it is rather tricky task to encapsulate some abstract ideas on a scene, e.g: (1 (the example is taken from the play of S. Behrman «Biography»)), (2 (the example is extracted from the play of K. Boothe «The Women»)):
1. ... in the wall spaces looking at the audience are great, dim canvases - copies by some former tenant left probably in lieu of rent - of Sargent's Lord Ribblesdale and Mme. X.
Whether it is due to the amenable spirit of the present incumbent or because they are relaxed in the democracy of art, these oddments of the creative spirit do not suggest disharmony (Behrman, 1941, p. 207).
(2) Today, Park Avenue living rooms are decorated with a significant indifference to the fact that ours is still a bisexual society. Period peacock alleys, crystal-hung prima-donna roosts, they reflect the good taste of their mistresses in everything but a consideration of the master's pardonable right to fit into his own home decor (Boothe, 1941, p. 603).
It is relevant to mention that there are some illustrations where unusual place indications are presented: (1 (the example is from the text of the play of B. and S. Spewack «Boy Meets Girl»)) appeals to the individual perception of a reader or (2 (the examples are extracted from the play of M. Connelly «The Green Pastures»)) represents itself an imaginative spatial locus:
(1) In Your Own Home. That is, if you have one, and if you listen to the radio (B. and S. Spewack, 1941, p. 588).
(2) a. The scene itself is a pre-Creation Heaven with compromises... (Connelly, 1941, p. 149).
b. GOD'S private office in Heaven (Connelly, 1941, p. 161).
As far as for American plays of the second half of the XX century concern they are mostly characterized
by the presence of specific non-imaginative spatial locuses, such as a restaurant, a hotel, a room and etc., which do not require from a reader/a viewer additional comprehension of the place of the action.
It is remarkable to state that the description of interior elements, as a subtype of spatial locus, is not only observed in the absolute beginning of the drama text but in the course of its development, where these spatial indications are interlaced with dialogical part. Such kinds of spatial locuses, presenting themselves the elements of interior or separate local indications can be distributed into the following types (are given in the order of usage frequency):
1. spatial indications pointing at moving/position of an actor on the scene: crossing the sofa; at the piano; at door; by the upper window; makes to the door; he begins moving around the stage; crosses downstage; they go to stage left; Mr. Miranda has now come out from behind the desk; exit Beth, upstairs; he runs out the front door; Julie goes back to the window; she exits through the up right door;
2. spatial indications with which an actor interacts or uses: settles back in chair; drops the shovel on the ground; she takes her pipe from the mantel shelf; noticing her staring into the mirror; he is now fairly cramped at one end of the bench; Frank puts the ice cream on the chair on stage left; Mr. Miranda takes a book from his desk; she crosses to the armchair and collapses into it; throwing things against walls; he bends the chair back, and begins to lather Clark's face; he takes up a massive candlestick and draws GOOKIN to the mirror;
3. spatial indications in combination with indications of an actor's emotions: backing away from window as if about to faint; pointing to the picture in wonder; HILDY stands dazed, looking out from the window; stands in the door, nerveless and meditative as a child; her sobs filling the room and corridor; sitting down with a sigh of relief under the tree; puzzled, slowly swinging chair around again;
4. spatial indications in combination with indications of an actor's actions: she climbs laboriously back up on the porch; Linda throws up her hands in disgust and goes to the upstage table; Flora shuffles to the edge of the steps and stands there with slight idiotic smile; she stops
at the bottom of the steps and stares at the sky, vacantly and raptly; HILDY leans weakly up against the desk and laugh hysterically; the girl walks back to the mirror and makes a face at his retreating back; get up from her chair and storms over to her friend;
5. spatial indications pointing at an actor outdoors: are sweeping snow from the entrance steps; Howie arrives in Greenwich village; Howie wanders through the landscape; at the corner of the house, he stops; he sits on the porch steps; Betty comes out from behind the tree; Then Claire jumps off the couch; A COLOURED MAN in chauffeur's uniform comes down the sidewalk;
6. spatial indications in combination with temporal indications: the rising sun streams in through the window, setting his figure; through the windows and the panes of the door come bright moonlight; a crouched silhouette against the moonlit desert.
In conclusion it is possible to state that spatial locuses inside the text of American drama of the XX century constitute the background for the described events and correspondingly are tightly interlaced with actors' actions and emotions.
Aiming at the full presentation of drama action, author involves in its sphere not only an individual but all inner object world in a tolerate rate. Due to this at the very beginning of dramatic texts or its compositional constituents of scenery description can be found. The elements of scenery description are the objects forming the general picture of the locality. There are no doubts that dramatic genre does not have any conditions for including pieces of scenery in the text, because the scenery is embodies with great conventions in stage setting. In the majority of the studied modern American plays the scenery description tends to the utmost narrowing of inner object set. Natural environment, as a rule, is depicted with few scenery hatchings and presents abstract images of scenery phenomena. For examples (1) M. Connelly «The Green Pastures», (2) S. Shepard «Seduced» u (3) J. Klein «Bety the Yeti»:
1. The foot of mountain appears; a trumpet call is heard as the foot of the mountain reaches stage center. The marchers halt. The picture now shows the mountain running up out of sight off right (Connelly, 1941, p. 191).
2. The full moon in the background starts to slowly turn
into orange as the sky grows darker to the end of the act (Shepard, 1984, p. 275).
3. A thick canopy of mossy trees that keeps daylight out and moisture in. The underground is thick with ferns, flowering plants and downed trees. There is an enormous Douglas Fir, centuries old, that dominates the scene ... (Klein, 1994, p. 73).
It is essential to highlight that the given above illustrations are the examples of geographically unmarked scenery, because they do not contain the indications of any geographical coordinates in presenting piece of landscape.
Alongside with geographically unmarked scenery in modern American drama of the 20th century there is geographically marked scenery, which gives evidence about one more specific feature of its text. This feature means that the plot of the plays is geographically detailed: 1) R. Sherwood «Petrified Forest» u S. Howard «They Knew What They Wanted»:
1. The scene of the entire play is the lunch room of the Black Mesa Filling Station and Bar-B-Q on the desert in Eastern Arizona...
In the right wall are wide windows, through which may be seen the porch and, beyond it, the desert purpling in the sunset (Sherwood, 1941, p. 361).
2. The scene of the play is the home of an Italian winegrower in the Napa Valley in California... The view from the house is over a valley and toward brown Californian hills. The landscape is checkered with cultivation. Some of the checkers are orchards. Most of them are vineyards. The foreground is all vines. Vines twine about the pillars of the porch (Howard, 1941, p. 5).
As a matter of fact these pieces of descriptions represent textual chronotope comprises many little details about action setting (including scenery). From the very first lines of the texts a reader obtains information about the actions of the plays, which took place on the desert in Easten Arizona and in The Napa Valley in California. Unlike a reader, a viewer has to guess about the location of the action via different semiotic channels, and sooner of all they will be based on visual information, which is conveys by the stage decorations, presenting the desert in Eastern Arizona...; the desert purpling in the sunset brown Californian hills). It is interesting point to be mentioned that not all viewers are able to identify the location of the action, but only those of them who are aware of Arisona and
California's landscapes. For the rest of the viewers this part of textual information will be lost, while a reader acquires this information quiet easily and unmistakably.
Apart from geographical realia in landscape descriptions in the texts of modern American drama of the XX century there are a lot of toponymes, which form urban scenery:
Dead end of a New York street, ending in a wharf over the East River. To the left are a high terrace and a white iron gate leading to the back of the exclusive East River Terrace Apartments... Beyond the wharf is the Rast River, covered by a swirling scum an inch thick... Up-town of the wharf as we float down Hell Gate, the River voices its defiant protest in fierce whirlpools and stumbling rapids, groaning. Farther down, we pass under the arch of the Queensboro Bridge, spired, delicate, weblike in superstructure, powerful and brutal in the stone and steel which it plants like uncouth giant feet on the earth. In its hop, skip, and jump over the River it has planted one such foot on the Island called Welfare, once the home of hospital, insane asylum, and prison ... (Kingsley, 1941, p. 453)
Another remarkable feature of the modern American plays is specification of vegetational scenery:
Enclosing the stage is a heterogeneous cluster of cottonwood, camphor, live oak and sycamore trees, yaupon and turkey-berry bushes, with their purple and red berries, sprays of fern-like indigo fiera and splashes of various Louisiana flowers (Connelly, 1941, p. 156).
There is no doubt that the given description of vegetational scenery in full informational content is available only to a reader. It is highly unlikely that a stage designer is able to show all botanical precisions of depicted plants, which in all their abundance will not be perceived by a viewer in a proper way. Moreover some word combinations in the structure of scenery descriptions are nothing else but metaphors spray of fern-like indigo fiera and splashes of various Louisiana flowers, which do not have visual embodiment or suppose exceptive imaginative solutions in the process of their presenting in stage decorations.
Conclusion
It has been found that at its absolute beginning dramatic text contains chronotope data divided into acts and scenes, but within the time this feature shifts from the typical to the changeable one. In this connection it was reasonable to retrace the changes in information representation. It seems important to conclude that in the dramatic texts of the second half of the XX century the spatiotemporal data are relocated into the non-dialogic part of the text, which is situated at the beginning of the acts and scenes, and are followed by the descriptions of stage settings. It means the peculiar packing of chronotope information. Moreover, it appears that in dramatic texts of the second half of the XX century, temporal indications are added by various data, for instance, by additional information about the air temperature and brightness of the daylight. But one cannot affirm that such specification of temporal indications is typical for the modern American dramatic texts, because the information about the time of a day is presented more often. Alongside with specification in temporal indications of stage actions there are other untypical features of American drama abstract temporal locus and extension of its borderlines.
Description of the interior occupies fairly big place in non-dialogic part of the modern American plays. The results of the investigation show that author's remarks (with description of interior in their structure) are characterized by particular expansion in size and occupy from a half of a page up to a page and a half of printed text. Distinctive feature of the American plays of the first half of the XX century is the presence in the interior description structure of the author's characteristic for the whole scenery in general. In a greater degree the author's appraisal of the interior is common for a prosaic text, because it is rather tricky task to encapsulate some abstract ideas on a scene. In conclusion it is possible to state that spatial locuses inside the text of American drama of the XX century constitute the background for the described events
and correspondingly are tightly interlaced with actors' actions and emotions.
As for the elements of scenery description, it is possible to declare that they are the objects forming the general picture of the locality. There are no doubts that dramatic genre does not have any conditions for including pieces of scenery in the text, because the scenery is embodied with great conventions in stage setting. In the majority of the studied modern American plays the scenery description tends to the utmost narrowing of inner object set. It also has been distinguished two types of scenery in modern American drama of the 20th century - geographically unmarked and geographically marked scenery. The latter gives evidence about one more specific feature of its text such as geographical realia, toponymes, specification of vegetational scenery. Moreover, some word combinations in the structure of scenery descriptions are nothing else but metaphors which do not have visual embodiment or suppose exceptive imaginative solutions in the process of their presenting in stage decorations
As a whole, it can be affirmed that during the reading of dramatic texts it might seem that as though the author forgets about their original orientation on stage performance. Some of the author's remarks are bound not to be embodied by a stage director and are available only for a reader, who in this aspect is set equal with a reader of a prosaic text. As for a viewer, they are highly unlikely to perceive author's description of the scenery in full informational content and consequently they will face definite informatory
gap.
What to have been done further is to analyze another content-related characteristics of non-dialogic part of DT, for instance portrait descriptions of the characters, communication of the characters and its reflection in the non-dialogic part, range of characters' actions and their commenting in the non-dialogic part. All these aspects seem to be essential for comprehensive understanding of informative potential of non-dialogic part of dramatic text.
CHRONOTOPE
NON-IMAGINATIVE SPATIAL LOCUS
(real interior descriptions, stage setti ng)
TEMPORAL INDICATIONS
IMAGINATIVE SPATIAL LOCUS (abstract interior descriptions)
EXTENDED TEMPORAL INDICATIONS
9CENER/DESCRIPTIONS (geographically marked scenery, geographically unmarked, vegetation scenery)
Figure 1. The structure of Cronotope.
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