Musical instruments in the literary world view of Anthony Burgess

Abstract

The article analyzes the verbal explication of musical instruments in the literary texts of Anthony Burgess, examines the specifics of individual-and-author’s perception and reflection of music in the writer’s literary world image based on the analysis of the contexts containing a description of musical instruments. The purpose of the paper is to identify the specifics of verbal explication of musical instruments in the literary world image of Anthony Burgess. The work was carried out using such research methods as the contextual analysis method and the component analysis method based on dictionary definitions. The certain types of musical instruments (strings, wind instruments, drums and brass) and their direct names (trumpet, drum, piano, etc.) are represented in the literary texts of A. Burgess. It has been established that the verbal representation of musical instruments in the literary world image of A. Burgess is distinguished by a high degree of metaphorization. From the position of axiology, the positive, (quasi) negative and neutral labeling of the analyzed lexemes is noted. Some musical instruments receive a detailed description with the indication of their color, material of production, localization, and sound characteristics. The analysis of the contexts that include the names of musical instruments in the literary texts of A. Burgess allows us to state that the writer in his literary works gives a high degree of importance to the sound of musical instruments in the process of revealing certain artistic meanings.