Architectonics
Architectonics is the principle of structure and governing design in an artistic work, as distinct from its texture or stylistic details of execution [Baldick, 19].
Originally, the word “architectonic” was concerned with architecture, especially building construction. It came from the Greek “architecton”, which means “master craftsman”. For instance, Aristotle used the term architecton for describing a person “who knows the matter and makes the product”. However, Immanuel Kant famously used the term in 1781 as a metaphor to differentiate “technical unity” and “architectonic unity.” An architectonic unity “originates from an idea”. However, the unity reached without architectonics is more limited. In this respect, architectonics started to appear after the late 18th century for describing architectural or artistic elements accordingly to a single harmonizing design.
As a concept architectonics helps composition scholars understand the relationship between elements and the whole. However, we already have a good term that does that – coherence. Architectonics implies a bigger sense of the whole than the whole of the topic. It involves an understanding of the writer’s personal connection with the topic [Greer, 71-72].
The architectonics of the textual world comprises three main components:
1. The literary conceptual domain as informative; a projection of the writer’s conceptual domain.
2. The readers’ conceptual domains.
3. The interpretive field of the text world model [Ogneva, 80].
⠀ 1. Chris Baldick. (2015). The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
⠀ 2. Greer Russell. (2013). Architectonics and style. The centrality of style. Fort Collins, Colorado: Parlor Press
⠀ 3. Ogneva, E. A., Stepanova, L. and Chikovani, T. V. (2022). Modeling of text and discourse worlds. Research Result. Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. 8. Russia: Belgorod National Research University.