Дата публикации: 2021

Дата публикации в реестре: 2022-10-06T22:20:39Z

Аннотация:

Средствами стилистического и нарратологического анализа показано, что цикл М. Синклер «Рассказы Симпсона» представляет собой модернистское исследо-вание сознания рассказчика. Обращаясь к традиционной форме повествования от первого лица, Синклер демонстрирует, что рассказывание историй о других является средством, которое помогает рассказчику избежать осознания правды о себе. Альтернативный модернизм М. Синклер ставит под вопрос попытки ее современников изобразить содержание сознания человека напрямую. The article considers short stories of May Sinclair (1863–1946) as a non-canonical variation of the English modernist short story. A historical overview presents Sinclair as a bestselling author of Victorian descent who was in touch with the artistic experimentation of the 1910–1920s. Critics point out that some of Sinclair’s novels can be considered modernist due to their preoccupation with subjectivity, which is formally reflected in the author’s use of “stream of consciousness”. Sinclair’s more traditionally narrated short stories, however, are rarely approached in a similar way and remain largely ignored, even though they are no less focused on the nature of consciousness and the problem of its representation. The second section of the article suggests that Sinclair’s Tales Told by Simpson (1930) can be considered as a modernist short story cycle which aligns itself with the traditional generic form of the tale in order to rethink the status of the storyteller. On the one hand, first-person narration links Sinclair’s book to the Victorian short story collections where the narrator carries on the tradition of oral storytelling and signifies the authenticity of the tale. On the other hand, in Sin-clair’s interpretation, first-person narration loses its transparency and reliability and becomes a means of complex portrayal of the narrator’s biased perception of himself and the others. The third section introduces the framework of literary characterization which is used to analyze the image of the narrator in Tales Told by Simpson. Literary characterization is triggered by explicit and implicit textual cues, which are situated on different levels of the narrative structure of the text. For Simpson, the narrating character, the most important are implicit autocharacterization cues, which include, on the one hand, the narrator’s reported actions, behavior, social environment, and attitudes, and, on the other hand, his narrative choices, style, and commentary. The fourth section applies the characterization framework to the analysis of the image of the narrator. Simpson’s characterization suggests that the way he perceives himself and the events he tells about differs from the way the reader is likely to model Simpson and interpret his stories. Various cues contribute to the reader’s impression of Simp-son as an egotistical and narrow-minded person. The narrator’s inability to understand and empathize with people of a different social standing, as well as his perceived sense of intellec-tual superiority, distorts his stories in order to hide the psychological deficiencies he is una-ware of. The shift from the story to the way it is told and to what it reveals about the narrator distinguishes Tales Told by Simpson as a highly innovative short story cycle. At the same time, representation of the narrator’s subjectivity from the outside by means of first-person oral narration sets Sinclair’s stories in opposition to modernist experiments in direct treatment of consciousness.

Тип: статьи в журналах

Источник: Вестник Томского государственного университета. Филология. 2021. № 70. С. 298-312