Vovk Marina Vitalievna – senior lecturer at the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Linguistics, National Research University “Moscow Power Engineering Institute”, Russia, Moscow
The aims to analyze the short story “The Joker” by J. Allsop with regard to its narrative structure and the humorous effect it produces. The literary narrative is viewed as a number of consecutive episodes linked by the main event and united by a hierarchically organized system of binary oppositions with the opposition between the expected and reality being the underlying one and actualized through the oppositions between life and death, happiness and grief, seriousness and joyfulness, laughter and tears that turn out to be subordinate to the main opposition in the chosen its humorous story. The binary oppositions manifest themselves on all text levels and thus contribute to creating humorous effect.
literary narrative; humorous story; binary oppositions; event; narrative method; text structure.
Download textFor citing: Vovk M.V. Binary oppositions as a structural principle in humorous literary narrative (based on the analysis of “The Joker” by J. Allsop). Ethnopsycholinguistics, 4(19), 80-95. DOI: 10.31249/epl/2024.04.05