Paradigm of Lemma Prose

Paradigm of Lemma Prose

Kos-Lajtman, Andrijana
Horvat, Jasna

The initial premise of this paper is the existence of literary and literary-scientific discourses characterized by instruments and methodology typical for lexicographical texts: dictionaries, encyclopaedias and lexicons. These are the texts of hybrid character in which, analogous to lemmas (dictionary headwords) in said lexicographical works, fragmentary discourses characterized by a combination of literary and scientific themes, narrative procedures and metatextual devices are formed. Regardless of whether these are texts of lexicographical structure, equipment and intention filled with literarized content or whether they are primarily literary expressions modelled with the help of lexicographic instruments, the authors of this paper have found their representatives at the very beginning of the new era (Bible) stretching all the way to texts with dominant postmodernist intentions. The authors explain the acceptance of the initial premises by the results of a conducted analysis of chosen lemma discourses and their individual merits. The very term lemma has been taken over from lexicography which mostly uses it to denote a „lexicographical headword“. Lemma prose is a coinage made by the authors of this paper and hence the paper itself is directed at its scientific testing – at verifying and proving the possibility of accepting a paradigm that would confirm its existence. Thereat by lemma prose we mean those literary texts reaching for lexicographic techniques of lemmatization, as well as specific instruments, and use them in various ways and on various discourse levels (starting from the title level to entire textual structure). The analysis of individual texts shows that it is not only the case of peculiar discourses reaching deep into the literary history, but also that the possibilities that this mode of narrativization and text structuring offers were recognized in particular by literary authors from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

768