Имитация языка периода XIX века в романе Дэвида Митчелла «Облачный атлас» (на материале главы «Тихоокеанский дневник Адама Юинга»)

Abstract

The article deals with the means of historical stylisation in the first chapter of David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas”. The chapter is written in the form of a journal kept by an American notary who travels to colonial New Zealand in the mid-19th century. It embodies the notion of language’s evolution distinguished by the author himself who creates the particular language environment for every time period portrayed in the novel. The author reconstructs the 19th century English successfully by using repeatedly such means as high-flown words (archaisms, literary words, historical and formal vocabulary), archaic spelling, means of word-building widely used at the time, Latin borrowings, exotic words, stylisation of speech specific for the people belonging to the lower class. The fact that the nautical terms and slang are widely used is noteworthy because it allows to draw similarities between the chapter and the genre of nautical fiction which was popular in the 19th century England.