The Use of Allusions in Charlie Kaufman’s Novel “Antkind”: an Interpretative Cognitive-discursive Approach

Abstract

The article considers approaches to the study and classification of allusion as an intertextual unit in fiction discourse based on the novel “Antkind” by the American writer and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. The cognitive-discursive approach to the study of allusion is based on the correlation of a word or any other language form and the intellectual activity of the author of the novel and the reader. The interpretative method of identifying allusion in literary discourse involves several stages: recognition, verification, understanding of the allusion, its interpretation in a specific context. As a result of the study, literary and artistic, mythological, biblical, cinematic, historical allusions and separately precedent phenomena were identified. Precedent phenomena are independent concepts that are part of the cognitive base of Charlie Kaufman and his readers, the decoding of which is carried out through thinking activity. The analyzed text fragments with the inclusion of allusions allow us to conclude that allusion is inextricably linked with the cultural component – real historical events, personalities, literary works, etc. For Charlie Kaufman, allusions are denotatives with a hidden meaning that can be decoded only by those readers whose cognitive base contains the relevant prior information.