Abstract
Fictional situations recounted by a narrator instantaneously trigger a mental representation of a text world (Gavins 2007) which aims to explicate how meaning is achieved by readers based on salient theories of stylistics. This study examines how text world creation is established while reading Mary Poppins (Travers 2014). Crucial excerpts are explored to explain how readers perceive events that constitute the narrative. As the author recounts all events through an omniscient perspective, a discourse world is established through schematic data of all participants in the discourse based on common ground information. Deictic shift (Segal 1995) is employed to demonstrate how a mental representation is spatially situated and to achieve rich presentations of the fictional world. The present study concludes that text-world approaches to Mary Poppins could explain interpretive controversies between the novel and the film, since participants, schema and ontological distance trigger spatialisation of the fictional worlds.
1 Introduction
Mary Poppins (Stevenson 1964) was released in the era of feminism in which the protagonist, a magical nanny, represented the dominant role in the nursery of the Banks’s family. She was blown by the East wind to a house, Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane in London, to care for the Banks children. As we read, we learn that Mary Poppins reunites the broken family through magical events and bizarre characters and realities. In the final chapter, all domestic predicaments are elusively resolved as soon as she flies away into the London sky, leaving the children with only small souvenirs proposing that she would revisit them.
Text World Theory (twt) takes on the cognitive process of the readerly experience of literary texts regarding what authors do with language and how they manipulate it. In other words, the theory leads to a comprehension of the means whereby readers construct fictional world(s) based on what they read and attempt to make sense of communicative events that are just imagined, wished for or hypothesised about. A reader can imagine the text world based on the “local and cumulative effects of specific linguistic choices” (Semino 2014, 66). Furthermore, understanding the text world can link to a psychologically realistic representation of an individual mind.
Since readerly experience is considered personal and interpretive, this study demonstrates how literary perceptions of Mary Poppins can be explanatory based on an ad hoc construction of fictional worlds. The reader is addressed to blend into the Mary Poppins’s world through the use of the pronoun “you” at the beginning of the novel. However, the serial narratives reveal that it is voiced through an omniscient third-person point of view where the author/narrator is able to access the mind of each character with infrequent hesitant judgments towards certain situations. The point of view is achieved through a narrator with an overarching vantage point, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story (Simpson 1993, 93). This perspective manipulates a means of readerly construction of mental representations provoked by “the act of reading” (Canning 2017, 172). At this juncture, twt is designed to explain how readers construct rich mental models as they read ongoing texts. It is also worth mentioning the significance of both deictic shift theory and contextual frame theory as they are inevitably involved in twt. On the one hand, deictic shift theory is used to explain the way in which readers feel deeply involved in the text world of a narrative. Meanwhile, contextual frame theory provides a connection between text world and deictic shift theory by explaining how we keep track of the narrative elements.
The story of Mary Poppins intrigued Walt Disney so much that he subsequently produced a musical film in 1964 starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. In spite of Travers’ opposition, the Disney production brought home many accolades and won five Academy Awards. In addition, the radiant characteristics of the protagonist gained further popularity through Broadway productions and a sequel, Mary Poppins Returns (2018). The “centre of attention” (Smith 1967, 29) somehow converges on the imposing dramaturgical analysis of the protagonist which significantly deviates from the original portrayal in the novel (Grilli 2017, 2). Regarding worldwide social media, Mary Poppins was controversially displayed and literary critics, as well as the author herself, agreed on Disney’s lack of subtlety (Matheson 2014, 149). The aim of conducting a twt analysis of Mary Poppins is to elucidate the interpretive contrast between the original novel and the Disney version. Since reading requires active interpretation while delving into the text, twt addresses the significance of the readerly experience when one constructs fictional worlds within.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Text World Theory (twt)
twt is a cognitive approach to literature which grasps the essence of “text-as-world” metaphor (Ryan 1998, 138). Constructed upon the notion of mental spaces (Fauconnier 1997, 34), the development of twt was initiated to account for how readers and hearers conceptualise “complex utterances” while encoding them (Werth 1999, 7). twt centres on discourse processing where literary interpretations take conceptual space into account. In addition, the theory particularly involves experiential and emotional aspects of literary works as it poses an appealing point of the readers’ sense of engagement with or immersion into the virtual realities that they create as they read (Gailbraith 1995, 21). There is a distinction between the author’s text world and the reader’s text world and it is not possible to create a definitive world because individual readers have different degrees of schematic knowledge (Gavins 2007, 155). A text world is thus dependently constructed upon three elements where author, text, and reader are concurrently present. Readers are treated as mental resources, where schematic knowledge, beliefs, desires and hopes come into play and which signify how they create their own text-worlds. Text world theory reveals a cognitive literary analysis where the text itself discloses how readers are actively immersed in the text and contribute to literary interpretations.
In Remote Worlds, “function-advancing” propositions (Werth 1997, 90) are new information added whilst the text progresses and involve discourse-world participants. The participants, defined as “characters”, subsequently construct text-worlds depending on their immediate discourse situation or their “knowledge frames” (Giovanelli 2013, 16) and generate their own distinct worlds through, for instance the use of modalities, speech and thought presentation, narrative point of view or focalisation. For example, while reading, readers can access these characters’ mental presentation using modalities such as obligation, desire, uncertainty and so on. These separate worlds are defined as “world-switches” (Gavins 2007, 48) which deictically ensue (represented through adverbs, such as “today”, “yesterday”, “now”, “here” and “there”) when there are temporal or spatial shifts from the main narrative.
A construction of the text world appears to be unidirectional, projected from the discourse world, text and the text world. However, the concept of text-world resulting from the discourse-world can be considered bidirectional (Stockwell 2002, 95) and complements the discourse-world when readers develop empathy towards a character’s belief and attitude (Mohammadzadeh et al. 2018, 583). These findings amalgamate the way in which common ground information and contexts derived from discourse participants inevitably conglomerate to construct literary interpretations.
The discourse world is the immediate real-world situation where a writer communicates with the reader through schematic knowledge of related participants which forms contexts through physical “entities” (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, 153). However, the contexts formed by the participants are restricted by “common ground” information which is relevant to keeping the interpretation in focus. To make sense of the communicative event, the reader creates a text world in which participants in the discourse world use existing textual and common ground information to construct it. The text world created thus represents a mental representation of the text. Text worlds consists of world-building elements and function-advancing propositions, as can be seen in the table below.
Within a text world, temporal world-switches occur when there are adverbs indicating instantiation of a subsequent text world. Temporal world-switches are based on sub-worlds (Werth 1999) where they are subsidiary to the primary text world. This explicates that the text world is metadiscoursal and that the sub-worlds are as “richly detailed” (Gavins 2007, 10) as the discourse-world from which they emerge and can be mapped to “frame-switch” in contextual theory (Emmott 1997, 133). The world-switch is indicated by a rounded rectangle throughout the analysis to display the differences between the text world and world-switches.
The concept of modal worlds can be categorised into boulomaic, deontic and epistemic (Gavins 2007, 94). These modal worlds link to participants’ desires, obligations and beliefs that are recounted in the discourse world or by characters in the text world. As modal worlds projecting from characters, they cannot be accessed by discourse participants and true or false statements based on these modal worlds are only meaningful in their modal worlds. The effect of modal worlds can “form an aspect of the characterisation” (Giovanelli 2010, 77) of a character whose conflicts are considered an essential element of the narrative. As we read, we learn to understand a character’s thoughts and beliefs because a text-world’s analytical framework offers “a means of “systematically exploring linguistic self-representation” (Van der Bom 2016, 91). Not only can readers keep track of the narrative points of view of various characters in the text, but they can also toggle between different text worlds to process the communicative events that constitute the narrative.
2.2 Deictic Shift Theory
The essential element of twt is the deictic centre, the focal point in the narrative. Readers can shift cognitive stance across “deictic coordinates” (Gibbons and Whiteley 2018, 164) and project a deictic centre that belongs to the narrator. Directionality of deictic shift (dt) can be either a “push” or a “pop” (Stockwell 2002, 49), in which the former suggests a deictic level further away from the reader’s focal centre, while the latter shifts to a closer level. An individual utterance may use person deixis expressing participant roles in a communicative event. The first-person pronoun “I” refers to the speaker of an individual utterance, the second-person pronoun “you” to the addressee and the third-person pronoun to other entities. The use of “I” and “you” may signify the “intrinsically deictic” (Semino 2014, 35) position where the utterance directly links to the speaker and the addressee. On the contrary, the use of third-person pronouns such as “they”, “he”, and “it” suggest a drifting deictic centre from the interlocutors. Place deictics signify spatial reference to the position of the speaker or writer using adverbs such as “here” and “there” or the demonstratives “this” and “that”. They encode the opposition between locations perceived as close to the speaker (this/here) and those perceived as distant (that/there). Time deictics encode temporal points in relation to the time of speaking which are signified through the means of tense (Levinson 1983, 76) and through the means of adverbs of time such as “now”, “then”, “yesterday” and “tomorrow”. Deictics can signify emotional or psychological distance, as can be seen through empathetic or relational deictics (Gibbons and Whiteley 2018, 172), in which honorific titles or forms of address of individual utterances affect social distance, signalling spatial relationships between the two interlocutors.
Since objects and entities in world-switches, encoded by deictics (see Table 2), are spatially and temporally shifted from the text world, readers subsequently have a cognitive positioning “within the world of the narrative” (Segal 1995, 14) and interpret the text from that perspective. This cognitive layer of interpretation links to the readers’ cognitive process and take account of their emotional involvement. In other words, the process they project from their present position within the discourse world to interpret events in the narrative as though from that within the text world. The positioning of deictics is constructed upon the categorization of external and internal focalisation (Genette 1988, 72). External focalization is considered as a narrator who can switch and create text worlds, whereas internal focalization is more personalized and is reflected through an enactor’s thoughts and feelings (Gavins 2007, 128). Regarding accessibility and truth-value, text worlds created by an external focaliser are considered participant-accessible because they share the common ground of a discourse-world participant and are fully reliable. On the other hand, text worlds created by an internal focaliser are considered enactor-accessible as they are voiced through the enactor’s unverifiable beliefs and judgments and are thus less reliable (Hallam 2013, 14). Several referents can lead to a case of “double deixis” (Gibbons and Whiteley 2018, 168) where the use of the second-person “you” could hover on the ontological boundaries between real readers and implied readers in fictional world.
The twt architecture (Giovanelli 2010, 219) consists of twt and ds providing information regarding the ontological status1 of the alternative worlds which establish a discourse (see Figure 1). Moreover, participants recognised at the discourse-world level are authentic people, including readers, authors and interlocutors since they belong to the real world. However, enactors at the text-world level belong to an alternative domain of reality as they exist in the participants’ thoughts which can be imaginary. The notion of ontological relationships between worlds thus depends on the cognitive level of either closeness or remoteness. When the text-world enactors establish world-switches or modal worlds, these worlds are cognitively remote to the narrative domain where immediate situations concurrently take place.
The Text World Theory Architecture.
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
Recent studies of twt and ds have applied literary linguistics to provide insightful information regarding “emotional reactions of characters” (Burke 2010, 12) and readerly experience, shared by either reading groups (Whiteley 2011, 30) or real imprisoned readers (Canning 2017, 174) and through statements at a murder trial (Ho et al. 2018). For ds, there have been relevant discussions on how readers “enter and move around in the worlds of the text” (McIntyre 2007, 120) and how ds offers insightful information regarding “reader-involvement” (Jeffries 2008, 69). As a reader-oriented approach, twt can contribute a means to understand readers’ expressive enactment or “self-implication” (Kuiken et al. 2004, 173). It is acknowledged that there was controversy during the filmmaking process between Disney and Travers as she discovered that Disney sought to alter the original novel for commercial purposes. Consequently, some parallel scenes have been extracted to highlight how each is different from the original novel. This study applies twt to demonstrate how readers arrive at interpretive controversies, a consideration that the author subsequently rejected prohibiting American filmmakers from adapting her other books to make promising sequels. Moreover, in writing to her publisher, Travers described Disney as having “mediocrity of thought, poor glimmerings of understanding and oversimplification” (Lawson 2013, 274).
3 Findings and Discussion
The present study applies twt and ds to four excerpts from the original novel to illustrate a means of discourse processing towards text-world creation from the narratives. The excerpts are key to drawing interpretive contrasts between the novel and the motion picture because they partly resemble scenarios and can be seen in the theatrical release.
3.1 Irrepressible Wind
The film presents Mary, the protagonist, in a graceful manner when she calmly floats down from the sky as if being able to control the wind. However, the narrative in the original novel is more elusive. This elusiveness could be derived from the protagonist’s enigmatic “shape” illustrated through the following text-world analysis drawn from the following excerpt.
Then the shape, tossed and bent under the wind, lifted the latch of the gate, and they could see that it belonged to a woman, who was holding her hat on with one hand and carrying a bag in the other. As they watched, Jane and Michael saw a curious thing happen. As soon as the shape was inside the gate the wind seemed to catch her up into the air and fling her at the house. It was as though it had flung her first at the gate, waited for her to open it, and then had lifted and thrown her, bag and all, at the front door. The watching children heard a terrific bang and, as she landed, the whole house shook (Travers 2014, 21).
On reading this passage, the protagonist (“the shape”) is foregrounded while Jane and Michael perceive the scene through mental verbs (“saw” and “heard”). The humanification of “the wind” is highlighted through action verbs (“catch” and “fling”). World-switch triggered through “as though” are used to represent the narrator’s metaphorical expression in which they seek logical reasons to explain the narrative. The narrative past perfect displays the narrator’s hypothetical world and denotes the temporal shift from the narrative past where the deictic centre is preposition “inside”, indicating movement close to a deictic centre and suggesting that the perceived. The physical location within the text world is specified by the spatially deictic reader’s suspended position within the text world is within the Banks’ house. As Mary arrives at the house, the narrator indicates the children’s mental processes (“saw” and “heard”). At this point, the reader’s position in the text world is spatially and temporally similar to that of the children. This appears to be a category B narrative in narratorial mode where the narrator recounts the story via an “invisible, non-participating character” (Simpson 1993, 62). This narrative style neatly falls into B(N) negative category with its words of estrangement (“seemed to” and “as though”) and lacks information relating to the characters’ thoughts.
Regarding twt, the narrator unfolds the events from a perspective in the fictional world. The vertical arrows signify material process signalling tangible actions, whereas the horizontal ones signify mental process signalling internalised actions. It appears that the reader focuses more on the protagonist and the wind, while Jane and Michael are in the background observing the scene. Of particular interest is that the wind processes are all tangible acts as it can “lift”, “fling”, “catch”, and so on. This introductory passage implies the role of the wind in manipulating the arrival of Mary Poppins to the Banks family. Due to the use of the past perfect tense, it is perceived that the wind is the “cause” of the main narrative. However, it is unclear whether the wind or Mary monitors the arrival.
Since Mary’s arrival is vaguely defined as intentional, the film represents the scene alternatively. When the wind changes from east to west, Mary gracefully floats down to the front of the Banks’ house, with the signal that she is cooperating with the wind. In contrast, upon reading the passage, the reader instead realises that the wind is full of action and controls all elements in the event depicted. The significance of the wind highlights the theme of the supernatural where nature manipulates all events without vivid explanation. In the film, the supernatural instead originates from Mary herself. This point is relevant to the interpretative contrasts whereby audiences perceive Mary as a “powerful figure” and “practically perfect” who can determine the outcome of events. On the contrary, in the novel, Mary was apparently “holding her hat” to prevent her from losing it, indicating that the wind controls how she arrives at the Banks’s house.
3.2 Dreamlike Transportation
“Mary,” he said, “I got an idea! A real idea. Why don’t we go there – right now – this very day” Both together, into the picture. Eh, Mary?” And still holding her hands he drew her right out of the street, away from the iron railings and the lamp-posts, into the very middle of the picture. Pff! There they were, right inside it!
travers 2014, 35
How green it was there and how quiet, and what soft crisp grass under their feet! They could hardly believe it was true, and yet here were green branches huskily rattling on their hats as they bent beneath them, and little coloured flowers curling round their shoes. They stared at each other and each noticed that the other had changed. To Mary Poppins the Match-Man seemed to have brought himself an entirely new suit of clothes, for he was now wearing a bright green -and-red striped coat and white flannel trousers and, best of all, a new straw hat. He looked unusually clean, as though he had been polished. (Travers 2014, 35)
According to the diagram, the two main discourse participants in the narrative are Mary Poppins and the Match-Man, while the world-switch spatially occurs through the phrase “there they were, right inside it”. Despite the lack of temporal shift, the physical location within the text world is specified spatially with the deictic verb “drew” as soon as their cognitive stance moves “away” and “out of the street” into “inside” the picture. Since the temporal shift does not occur, the reader fairly realises that the world-switch consequently initiates the blending of realities in the text world. The effect of cognitive blending indicates that the world-switch occurs immediately and the shift is neither intentional nor explicable regarding the course of the spatialisation. The analysis also advocates that the world-switch (wb2) has a dreamlike quality where mental processes (“looked, “seemed”, “believe” and “noticed”) are relatively eminent.
Complication arises regarding the narrative, in which the narrative first falls into Simpson’s narrative type B narratorial mode. However, it shifts into reflector mode while elaborating Mary’s individual thoughts about the Match-Man’s appearance. As can be seen from the passage, the last clause “[h]e looked unusually clean, as though he had been polished,” it is difficult to make a distinction whether the narrative point of view belongs to Mary Poppins or the narrator. This is a case of mingling voice which could affect the interpretation (Simpson 1993, 63); nonetheless, the effect mildly affects the overall interpretation of the passage as it occurs once and appears near the end of the passage.
3.3 The Vanity of Poppins
And if I have any more questions we will just go Back Home. And she sniffed her usual sniff of displeasure. Mary Poppins put her hat straight at the Tobacconist’s Shop at the corner. It had one of those curious windows where there seem to be three of you instead of one, so that if you look long enough at them you begin to feel you are not yourself but a whole crowd of somebody else. Mary Poppins sighed with pleasure, however, when she saw three of herself, each wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a blue hat to match. She thought it was such a lovely sight that she wished there had been a dozen of her or even thirty. The more Mary Poppins the better.
travers 2014, 44
This three-tiered text world is temporally triggered through various deictic points (see Figure 4). However, the spatial shift does not occur as the deictic centre is at the tobacconist’s shop, precisely “in front of” the mirror. Multiple world-switches are established in this narrative. The immediate narrative situation forms wb2 (main narrative) as she “put her hat straight” and cues a world-switch (wb1) through a temporal shift of present tense, an establishment of reality comparison through the use of “you” when readers “look” at their reflections and “feel” with the situation narrated. Concurrently, wb3 is formed by boulomaic modality “wished” as it indicates Mary’s personal desire.
wb1 also builds upon a series of components of material processes “put” and “sighed” as well as that of mental processes “saw” and “thought”. In particular, the narrator represents the world-switches through the similar spatial location. However, as Mary “wished”, world-builders indicate a shift in both temporal and spatial foci (“there had been a dozen of her or even thirty”) and cue a further world-switch representing the world inside the mirror.
3.4 Boulomaic Modality
As previously discussed, the narrator fleshes out the protagonist’s inner traits with more world-building and function-advancing information about her wishful thoughts of having as many reflections as possible in the mirror. The formation of boulomaic modality is originated by discourse participants where they “conceptualize both the propositions being modalized and, separately, the speaker’s attitude towards them” (Gavins 2007, 13). The construction of boulomaic modality displays an alternate world (wb3) from the originating text-world (wb2) where they are not unrealised by other discourse participants. Alternatively, discourse participants could only see Mary looking at the mirror, yet they could not access the modal-world in which Mary reflected upon her desire.
When the narrator describes “you” to “feel” and “look”, the temporal focus is shifted into the present simple tense and establishes an alternative world that is different from the originating world. This alternative world (wb1) is relatively closer to readers as they can identify with their references of factual common grounds. At this juncture, the narrator toggles back and forth from the worlds created by discourse-world participants. In wb1, the reader gets involved through the presence of “you”, while the narrator recounts Mary’s presence in the past event in wb2. At the similar location (the Tobacconist’s shop) but at the different temporal locative (“had been”), the furthest ontological distance immediately transpires in wb3 where Mary desires to accomplish her wish. The clause “[t]he more Mary Poppins the better” demonstrates an enactor-accessible viewpoint where the statement cannot be verified by other discourse participants but it is solely based on the character’s personal belief and judgement. On the character-accessible position, when compared to “you” in wb1, it is not problematic for the reader to identify with the narrative based on their schematic knowledge (“look”) and sensations (“feel”). In contrast, for the enactor-accessible position, the reader may feel unease at seeing multiple self-imitations, when compared to Mary who appreciates having those as much as “thirty”.
3.5 Theoretical Situation and Direct Addressee
If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. He will push his helmet slightly to one side, scratch his head thoughtfully, and then he will point his huge white-gloved finger and say: “First to your right, second to your left, sharp right again, and you’re there. Good morning.”
travers 2014, 17
twt analysis: “Irrepressible Wind”.
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
twt analysis: “Dreamlike Transportation”.
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
twt analysis: “The Vanity of Poppins”.
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
twt analysis: “Theoretical Situation”.
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
The if-clause structure indicates the theoretical situation where the reader’s immediate “epistemicity” (Giovanelli 2013, 190) occurs. The passage begins with an unidentified voice creating a text world located in the present (“want”). This text-world contains a character (“you”) and the Policeman in the conversation. The voice draws on the if-clause structure and creates a series of epistemicity realised by hypothetical clauses (“if you…”). Then, another world-switch (wb3) is triggered by the Policeman’s direct speech “…you’re there” when the location is changed by a deictic “there”. Therefore, the ontological distance is increased due to the use of boulomaic modality (“want”) and hypothetical clauses which make the events recounted at the beginning of the story more distant from the deictic centre of the narrative. The twt analysis also highlights that the reader “you” functions as a discourse-world and text-world participant and that the boundary between reality and imagination is blurred. The transcending experience is classified as “apostrophic (vertical) address” (Herman 2002, 345) where readers in the real world are straightforwardly addressed and spellbound in the light of the narrator’s perspective. Due to the narrative’s unidentified voice, the addressee “you” here may not be “blurred” (Bell 2007, 200). To illustrate, “you” does not possess consciousness representing either positive or negative shading (Simpson 1993, 70) and it is not a “narratee-character” (Prince 2012, 20) who may or may not have a participatory act in the recounted situations. In fact, “you” in the story belongs to the narrative report of speech act (nrsa) where mental involvement of individual characters is entirely absent (Leech and Short 2007, 259).
Though the classification of “you” could be established, the effect of two character-accessible world-switches through the addressee “you” forms ontological distance. It should be noted that “you” can freely shift from the present location (“at the cross-roads”) to the further location (“there”). On the one hand, the reader from the discourse-world level is delved into the text-world level. Meanwhile, the reader can reposition temporo-spatially as a result of the narrative scheme. From the twt analysis, it can be concluded that the opening passage of Mary Poppins is written in the conditional structure in order to introduce events in a most fictitious narrative. Based on this information at the very beginning “for this book is all about that particular house – you will very soon find it” (Travers 17), it is baffling for discourse participants to identify the exact location of this imaginary house whose readers’ mental representation would be alternatively created. For example, the directions given by the Policeman are deictically problematical since discourse-participants have no common ground of the “crossroads”, functioning as the main deictic reference for the subsequent directions (“right”, “left”, and “sharp right”). While “the policeman” may reflect typical non-verbal gestures (“push his helmet” and “white-gloved fingers”) of British culture, the theoretical situation otherwise suggests that the narrative is fictitiously staged for Mary Poppins.
It is noted that the narrator uses “you” in theoretical situations throughout the novel. The effect of a direct addressee is thus more elusive than the conventional “you” as a second-person narrative, as seen in guidebooks or advertisements (Bell 2007, 191). This effect, however, indicates that the events recounted throughout the story do not respond to any actual reader but only to the fictitious “you” at the level of the “implied reader” (Schmid 2014, 302).
3.6 Text-worlds and Psychological Expression
Though twt sheds light on the cognitive process of the “implied reader” whose response to the text is induced and projected by linguistic configuration of the text, the interpretation of Mary Poppins made by actual readers, as can been seen through the lens of production crew of the film, is contradictory. Therefore, in this section, twt is predominantly used to demonstrate the contrastive interpretations of the novel made by the implied reader against those of actual readers. To illustrate the controversy derived from the actual readers’ perception, some illustrations taken from the film are displayed to discuss interpretive contrasts.
When Mary Poppins was published, readers were introduced to an unfamiliar world where they had shared social understanding long before the film was made. Readers may experience “narrative feelings” (Kuiken et al. 2004, 175) or “psychological expression” (Pence 2004, 273) towards the original novel as they identify or empathise with a character’s motives. Moreover, psychological reader-response theory explains how reading can link to the psychological response of the reader (Holland 1998, 120). The feelings amalgamate a “lasting sense of shared or affirmed social understanding” (Kuiken et al. 2004, 175). As the reading experience emerges and affects the reader’s psychological expression during narrative sequences, twt analysis can explicate the reader’s shifting perspectives in terms of deictics.
Mary’s graceful arrival at Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane is represented through her confident outlook with divergent feet (see Figure 6). Mary’s presence is predominantly mistaken by Michael as a witch but it is later argued against by Jane who confirms that Mary does not carry a broom. It is noticeable that Poppins glides through the gate with elegance, except for her feet which foreshadow her eccentric “anomalies” (Matheson 2014, 151). However, the interpretive contrast could be explained through twt analysis (see Figure 2) which highlights the significance of the wind through humanification represented by material processes, whereas in the film Mary seemingly takes control of the wind for the purpose of her “divine” arrival (Reddick 2015, 150).
Mary Poppins’s arrival (Stevenson 1964).
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
On the second occasion, Bert, as a screever, attempts to employ his peculiar way of taking the children to a fictional park inside his chalk drawing. After his unsuccessful attempt, Mary shrinks and takes all of them into the drawing herself with a single jump (see Figure 7). Compared to the novel, this scene is a parody of how Mary and the Match-Man transport themselves into the drawing. The interpretive contrast is not only at the story level, where both Jane and Michael are not included in this adventure, but also at the discourse level. Based on twt analysis, while the novel represents the act as being overwhelmed by the material processes of “drew” and “held” by the Match-man, the act of wondrous transportation is only realised through a deictic “there” and comprises fewer mental processes. As a result, the novel represents the transportation as a means of instantaneous shift through the deictic “there”. By comparison, the motion picture displays the transportation in a procedural manner. It is possible that the author interpreted magic as synchronised and dreamlike as it could be realised through a deictic expression. Therefore, readers could conceptualise that the transportation in the novel is instant, while in the motion picture it is rather procedural. Besides, Mary’s ability to adjust the size of human beings is never addressed in the novel.
Popping into the drawing (Stevenson 1964).
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
This scene reveals the description of Mary’ reflection as comical and “cheeky” (Matheson 2014, 148) and fairly resembles the original novel where Mary overtly appreciates her beauty. It is apparent that Mary is preoccupied with her looks as she hastily replaces an old, small wall mirror with a finer one from her carpet bag. Additionally, she also has a makeup mirror, as can be seen from both the prelude and the chimney journey, and a handheld mirror which she uses to appreciate her beauty. Singing and tidying up the children’s nursery, Mary resents the way her reflection outdoes the way she sings (see Figure 8). Although the acts of self-admiration are ostensible in the film, this is not the case in the novel. twt analysis keeps track of the narratives and highlights three interpretive contrasts: at the level of the addressee “you”; at the main narrative; and at Mary’s boulomaic world (see Figure 4). At the outset, there is no involvement of “you” as implied addressees in the scene, therefore the world switch through the character “you” disappears. The second difference is that the location of the beauty appreciation occurs in the nursery, while the original novel progresses in front of the Tobacconist’s Shop. The final difference can be considered from Mary’s boulomaic world where she desires to have “more Mary Poppins”. Mary appears to unconditionally appreciate her reflections, whereas this point is contrastively interpreted and, thereby represented as “cheeky”, in the film.
Mary’s reflection (Stevenson 1964).
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
Shortly after the prelude, an introductory session of Bert, the male protagonist of the film, highlights the mimicry of the narrative structure of the novel. Noticing the wind change, Bert is primarily considered as the main narrator in the movie, for he is the person giving directions to the Banks’ residence where domestic conflicts occur (see Figure 9). He acts as if he could break through the fourth wall and talk to the audience addressing them as “you”. He also acts as if he could hear the audience’s questions. At this juncture, it is similar to the function of implied reader because the audience cannot talk back (Leech and Short 2007, 209) and they can also distinguish the boundaries of fiction and reality. Therefore, this is parallel with the theoretical situation that the twt analysis offers because the world-switches occur on the foundation of fictionality. In other words, “you” in the novel may be able to create boulomaic worlds yet it remains that the boundaries between the real reader and the implied reader do not collapse into each other. The second-person narrative in Mary Poppins is fairly imperceptible as it is constructed upon the conditional structure. The only difference between the novel and the film is thus at the narrative control where it is an omniscient narrator who has authoritativeness in the novel. On the other hand, Bert eventually becomes a character and lacks authoritative voice after the introductory session.
Implied addressee (Stevenson 1964)
Citation: Manusya: Journal of Humanities 25, 1 (2022) ; 10.1163/26659077-25010018
4 Conclusion
The present study applied twt to account for how readers mentally construct fictional worlds using spatialising elements in Mary Poppins. Since there is an addressee, “you”, in the novel, twt provides a linguistic premise through deictic shifts which signal the degree of involvement when readers delve into what they are reading. This study illustrates discourse processing through the excerpts and the comparable circumstances captured from the film. When compared to the original novel, twt analysis contributes to the interpretive contrasts as can be seen from the selected scenarios. Although they are inspired from the original novel, the portrayal of both settings and characters are divergent. While it is reported that the author mostly disavows Disney’s direction of the film, it should be noted that twt alternatively provides interpretive contrasts through linguistic realisation and deictic expressions. In conclusion, since the novel was originally published in 1934, the present study chiefly elaborates on the creation of fictional worlds where readers would fossilise before the theatrical release of the movie. twt takes account of mental models constructed upon reading and ds accounts for the degree of narrative feeling and both theories contribute to spatialisation in the fiction. Since literary interpretations are mostly grounded in active reading, it fosters cautious optimism where literary adaptations can trigger plausible controversies, not only through sequential events at the story level but also through spatialising narratives at the discourse level.
5 Acknowledgement
This research was developed from work on the research project, initiated as a pilot study in cognitive and corpus stylistics, sponsored by the revenue budget from International College for Sustainability Studies, Srinakharinwirot University (292/2020).
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The term is used to describe mental proximity (closeness/remoteness), the division between actual and virtual landscapes (Gibbons 2014, 410).
