Narativní scénáře a piktoriální modely
NARRATI VE SCRIPTS AND PICTORIAL MODELS

Summary/Abstract: Following the path of research inquiring into the mutual relations of fine arts and literature, our intention is to investigate the alternatives of transfering certain ready-made structures from one media representation to another one, as well as the strategies of its adaptation to the capacity of the media taking over the new structure, i.e. literature and narrative fiction in particular. The focus is on such cases, where individual components of story comply with the general conditions of narrative structure and particular requirements of the plot, while representing a verbal form (or linguistic update) of a pictorial model, which often reflects a typical cultural scheme of the period concerned. Adopting the notion of pictorial model as introduced by Tamar Yacobi we revisit and explicate her analysis of its employment in Nabokov’s short story “Spring in Fialta” (1936) to demonstrate its interpretive potential (provided it is contextualized both with other intermedia devices in the particular narrative and in Nabokov’s poetics). Adding further examples from John Fowles’s fiction we aim at distinguishing between singular (illustrative) and structural use of pictorial model. The latter is demonstrated in František Langer’s short story „Susanna and the elders“ (1921) where the explicit quotation as well as latent presence of the eponymic pictorial model functions both as a plot scenario and as an interpretive matrix. Ekphrasis (of a fictional painting) and various more or less explicit, sometimes narratively diffused representations or even subtle allusions of several pictorial models (e.g. candle-lit intimate scenes of Flemish and French masters of the 17th c.) may be found also in Alois Jirásek’s novelette Zahořanský hon (1885); nevertheless, the crucial scheme is the employment of the gallant scenes typical of rococo paintings (particularly its prototypes which may be identified in Fragonard’s works), including not only their topics and props but even techniques (such as scene lighting), which are applied here both as story components and discourse devices. While in many cases displayed by the author of the concept, Tamar Yacobi, pictorial models function as inset partial schemes and mere allusions carrying accessory cultural meanings, Jirásek’s novelette may be considered a salient example of their employment in construing the entire (rococo) storyworld as well as in the narrative discourse.

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