2021: XXIII
Articoli

«Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy e Bess andarono tutte insieme a cercare un nido d’uccello». Il potenziale diegetico e associativo del nome nel romanzo psicologico di Shirley Jackson

Elvira Assenza
Università di Messina

Pubblicato 2022-01-25

Parole chiave

  • The Bird’s Nest,
  • diegetic potential of the name,
  • phono-conceptual associations,
  • phono-symbolic associations

Abstract

The paper focuses on the fictional names in the novel The Bird’s Nest (1954) by Shirley Jackson. The analysis is conducted exploiting: 1) the pattern of the «intralinguistic mind», developed by Sasso (1993) to identify the anagrammatic computations in poetic texts; 2) the theories on phonosymbolism developed by (psycho)linguistic studies on the phenomenon; 3) an experimental test created ad hoc. The overall results of the research reveal the strong semic dynamism of the Jacksonian names, able to catalyze the thematic cores of the narration through a triggering of a dense network of phono-conceptual and phono-symbolic associations in the mind of the author and reader.