| Abstract [eng] |
The article analyses the theme of fair in the book of the 17th century author John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress on the basis of the reception theory. The literary context of the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress has been given; the meaning of the chosen allegory for general literature has been emphasized. The article discusses semantic aspects of the chosen work related to the theme of the fair by using text analysis methods of the German reception theoretician Wolfang Iser. Fictionalisation of the processes of actions of functional differentiation (selection, combination, disclosure) in Bunyan’s text presupposes and explicates cultural references, biblical allusions reminding of the specificity of the fair and the meaningful moments of the heroes’ personal names. The semantic aspects of the theme of the fair (the specifics of literary heroes’ names, the origin, activities of the Vanity Fair mentioned in the text), the four perspectives of the narrated text (the narrator’s perspective, the heroes’ perspective, the plot perspective and the fictional hero’s perspective) form the vision of the Vanity Fair, which has been used to reveal criticism of materialism, people’s vices and depict positive Christian behaviour. The discussed fictionalisation aspect in Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress, the use of proper names and biblical allusions according to Iser’s ideas enables analysing the text of the allegory while avoiding limits of the literary canon. |
