A Transitivity Analysis of Character Construction in Gogol's ‘The Nose’

Abstract

Written in 1835, Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ is a masterpiece in the Russian literature. The story is widely viewed as satire of Petersburg society in which people are judged according to their rank and appearances. This study diverges from the existing literature by focusing on the grammatical construction of the nose’s character and how grammar contributes to the creation of social identity in fictional worlds. It also attempts to uncover the linguistic strategies underlying the central impossibility of the story the transformation of an inanimate body part, Mr. Kovalyov’s nose, into an autonomous social agent. By analyzing 60 clauses across three narrative phases: the nose as object as agent and its return to objecthood using Halliday’s transitivity system (TS), this study reveals that the transformation of the nose is achieved through a systematic redistribution of participant roles rather than through the thematic content alone. Material, mental, verbal, and relational processes are shown to contribute differently to the construction of the nose’s social positioning. Furthermore, the study argues that the story’s absurdity derives from the grammatical naturalness with which impossible events are presented. To address the limitation of analysing a translated text, the study compares two independent English translations (Wilks, 1987; Pevear & Volokhonsky, 1999). this current study extends transitivity analysis beyond character construction to the grammatical encoding of social identity in literary fiction. It also contributes to the field of stylistics by broadening our understanding of writers’ styles of building characters in story world.