Text-Worlds in Michael Swan’s Poetry: A Reader’s Perspective

Abstract

The article highlights the role of world-building elements in the process of readers’ interpretation of poetic texts. According to Text World Theory (P. Werth, J. Gavins), elements that set temporal and spatial boundaries, specify objects and entities; elements that describe their qualities; and those that desceibe events, actions or states enable readers to construct their own text-worlds – mental representations of the discourse. This principle underpins our analysis of free verse poetry of Michael Swan, a contemporary British linguist and poet. His texts abound in references to objects, entities, spatial and temporal relationships in the world around us; often, they dominate in the verbal context of a poem. Such references are a characteristic feature of both narrative and metaphor-based poetry. World-building elements are perceived as especially foregrounded in the poems where no conclusion or attitude are explititly stated. There are the following types of world-builders in Michael Swan’s poems: units that denote God as the supreme being, persons, animals and birds, geographic objects, material objects, objects and phenomena in the world of nature, scientific objects and notions, phenomena of human spiritual life, temporal and spatial parameters. We also consider their attributes. Taken together, they illustrate Michael Swan’s general themes – the nature of reality and being, the conception of God, human beings in social and historical contexts, human psychology, human relationships with nature, art. Besides, Swan’s mimetic reflection of reality has a significant emotionl potential. A mini-experiment within the framework of this research shows that it is necessary to further develop students’ skills in inferential interpretation of poetry.