Academic literature on the topic 'Roadside Picnic'

Введение. Дана репрезентация индивидуально-авторского концепта НАУКА в художественном тексте, относящемуся к научно-фантастическому дискурсу. Представлено соотношение понятий «лингвокультурный концепт», «художественный концепт» и «индивидуально-авторский концепт». Обоснована ключевая роль компонента «наука» для выражения сути жанра научной фантастики. Описаны различные методики репрезентации лингвокультурного и индивидуально-авторского концептов, реализованных в художественном тексте. Материал и методы. Материалом исследования послужила повесть «Пикник на обочине» Аркадия и Бориса Стругацких – ярких представителей жанра научной фантастики. Методологическая основа работы – это существующие в лингвокультурологии подходы, согласно которым лингвокультурный концепт, преобразованный автором в соответствии с его собственным восприятием действительности, репрезентируется посредством языка в художественном тексте в виде художественного (индивидуально-авторского) концепта. Методика описания лингвокультурных концептов З. Д. Поповой и И. А. Стернина, использованная в исследовании, включает этимологический и дефиниционный анализ имени концепта, выявление синонимов имени концепта, анализ паремий и фразеологизмов, содержащих имя концепта, ассоциативный эксперимент. Для репрезентации лингвокультурного концепта НАУКА применялись лексикографические источники – общелингвистические и специализированные словари русского языка. Результаты и обсуждение. Выстроена структура содержания лингвокультурного концепта НАУКА в русском языке, включая его понятийную и ценностную части. Репрезентирован индивидуально-авторский концепт НАУКА, вербализованный в художественном тексте повести А. и Б. Стругацких. Проведен сопоставительный анализ содержания лингвокультурного концепта НАУКА и одноименного индивидуально-авторского концепта. Заключение. Индивидуально-авторский концепт НАУКА, репрезентированный в повести «Пикник на обочине», отличается от одноименного лингвокультурного концепта по содержанию номинативного поля: ядерной зоной здесь стала «работа, род занятий, профессия», появился новый признак «объекты научного исследования», который привносит дополнительный смысл: научное познание – это не только рациональное следование законам, но и нечто интуитивное, иногда иррациональное. Оценочная часть индивидуально-авторского концепта отражает романтическое, эмоциональное представление братьев Стругацких о науке как о важнейшей профессиональной деятельности. Introduction. The article describes how the author’s individual concept SCIENCE is represented in a science fiction book “Roadside Picnic” written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The introduction correlates the concepts of “linguocultural concept”, “literary concept” and “author’s individual concept”, substantiates the key role of the component «science» in expressing the essence of the science fiction genre, describes various methods of representing the linguocultural concept and the author’s individual concept, implemented in the literary text. Aim and objectives. The article aims at the representation of the author’s individual concept SCIENCE in a literary text belonging to science fiction discourse. Material and methods. The material for this research is the story “Roadside Picnic” written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the genre of science fiction. The methodological basis of the research is represented by existing cultural linguistic approaches, according to which the linguocultural concept, transformed by the author in accordance with his/her own perception of reality, is represented by means of language in a literary text in the form of a literary (author’s individual) concept. The methodology for describing linguocultural concepts by Z. D. Popova and I. A. Sternin, which is used in this work, includes: etymological and definitional analysis of the concept name, identifying synonyms for the concept name, analysis of paremias and aphorisms, which include the name of the concept, associative experiment, frequency analysis, etc. To represent the linguocultural concept SCIENCE, general linguistic and specialized dictionaries of the Russian language were used. Results and discussion. As a result of the research we have built the structure of the content of the linguocultural concept of SCIENCE in the Russian language, including its conceptual and value parts; have represented the author’s individual concept of SCIENCE, verbalized in the literary text of the Strugatsky story and have carried out a comparative analysis of the content of the linguocultural concept of SCIENCE and the same-name author’s individual concept. Conclusion. It is concluded that the individual author’s concept SCIENCE, represented in the story “Roadside Picnic”, differs from the linguocultural concept SCIENCE in terms of the content of the nominative field: “work, occupation, profession» became the nuclear zone, and a new concept feature “objects of scientific research” appeared, bringing an additional meaning. The evaluative part of the author’s individual concept reflects the Strugatskys’ romantic, emotional view of science as the most important professional activity.

When I was a kid, my mother would send me or my younger brother to the attic—typically in late July or early August—to drag down the Samsonite suitcases to prepare for the annual family road trip to visit my father’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. In the late 1940s, my grandparents had plucked my father and his siblings from a backroad farm in the Tennessee hills and plunked them down on a similar backroad farm in Virginia. At the time, when telephones and car trips, even postage stamps, were luxuries, the comfort of family must have seemed a lifetime away. To maintain the bond, my grandfather’s nine sisters—none of whom ever moved more than 40 miles from the house they grew up in—hosted a summer family potluck. My grandfather always attended, even when he could not afford to take his family along. When my parents married, they made the trip to the reunion our annual “vacation.” The eight-hour road trip was a highlight of the year; it was essentially the only traveling my family did, and it required preparations. My mother spent the week prior to the trip choosing the clothes we would take, filling the toiletry case with small bottles of shampoo and new toothbrushes, and shopping for groceries for our in-route picnic lunch. My father disliked restaurants and air conditioning, so a shady picnic at a roadside table was a welcome relief from the sweaty backseat of our Chevrolet Impala. The hills of East Tennessee were dotted with “attractions”: air-brushed t-shirt shops, miniature golf greens, pancake houses, and steak-and-potato restaurants. After a few days, we would return home, mimicking the accents of our distant cousins and showing off our inexpensive souvenirs. Now, with the ubiquity of air travel, a journey of 350 miles seems inconsequential, but when I was young, the idea of a road trip possessed a sense of possibility. As the miles ticked by, moving me away from what I knew and understood best, the world across the state border shimmered with expectation.

This dissertation deals with how science fiction reflects the shift in cultural paradigms that occurred in the Soviet Union between the 1960s and the 1970s. Interest was displaced from the rational to the irrational, from a scientific-technologically oriented optimism about the future to art, religion, philosophy and metaphysics. Concomitant with this shift in interests was a shift from the future to an elsewhere or, reformulated in exclusively spatial terms, from utopia to heterotopia. The dissertation consists of an analysis of three novels by the Strugatsky brothers (Arkady, 1925-1991 and Boris 1933-2012): Inspector Glebsky’s Puzzle (Otel’ U pogibšego al’pinista, 1970), The Kid (Malyš, 1971) and Roadside Picnic (Piknik na obočine, 1972) and two films Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (Hukkunud alpinisti hotell/ Otel’ U pogibšego al’pinista, Kromanov, 1979) and Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1980).  The three novels, allegedly treatments of the theme of contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, were intended to be published in one volume with the title Unexpected Encounters. The films are based on two of the novels. In the novels an earlier Marxist utopia has given way to a considerably more ambiguous heterotopia, largely envisioned as versions of the West. An indication of how the authors here seem to look back towards history rather than forward towards the future is to be found in the persistent strain of literary Gothic that runs through the novels. This particular trait resurfaces in the films as well.  The films reflect how tendencies only discernable in the novels have developed throughout the decade, such as the budding Soviet consumer culture and the religious sensibilities of the artistic community.

This chapter presents an overview on the genesis of the film’s creation; the novel it was based upon, written by the Strugatsky brothers, Tarkovksy’s first musings on its viability for a screen adaptation, as well as the various predicaments that arose in the film’s now-infamous production period. This includes the highly controversial filming within a contaminated body of water that may or may not have led to two actors and Tarkovsky himself contracting cancer in later years. The chapter also includes a brief summation of the film’s reception both nationally and internationally, as well as Tarkovksy’s subsequent legacy within the larger film community up to present day.