Conclusion

Patricia Highsmith’s anti-hero Tom Ripley, who first appears in her 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, is made the focal point of this concluding chapter. Among Ripley’s more obvious talents is his ability to impersonate others, this being pursued to an extreme degree as he murders, and then takes on the identity of, his friend Dickie Greenleaf. Analysing Ripley’s imposture of Dickie through the lens of performativity theory (Austin and Derrida), this chapter demonstrates why this is an apt way of reflecting upon the previous chapters of the book for three reasons. Firstly, rather than focusing solely upon identifications as constative utterances which verify a pre-existing identity, this book has interpreted them as modes which perform identities in specific ways. Secondly, these performances are deeply connected to the precise form of an identification technique but are also determined by the contexts in which techniques arise and individual identifications take place. Thirdly, the book concludes by emphasising how it is the performativity of narrative prose which is at the heart of the connections traced in the preceding pages. Literature performs identities that reflect but also project and imagine what identity is and could be: subjectivity is not represented in literature, it is constituted by its forms. In this sense, the importance of literature to this project is the fact that it is only in its realm that the truly performative nature of identificatory methods can be seen.

Carnavalisation et travail des stéréotypes dans La Guerre, yes sir! (1968) de Roch Carrier

Carrier’s novel was published in the same year as Nègres blancs d’Amérique by Pierre Vallières and it relies on the same dialectics between the colonizer and the colonized that was prevalent in Québécois narrative prose in the 1960s. While being grounded in this cultural context, Carrier transforms this dialectic by setting his narrative in a rural environment and against the background of World War II (the visitation of a fallen French-Canadian soldier whose remains are escorted to his native village by English-Canadian comrades). Such aesthetic reworking complexifies the ideological message of Carrier’s novel. I will study the interplay between national ideology and Carrier’s narratives strategies and particularly on the clash between ethnic stereotypes and the « carnavalesque » and the grotesque.

ARTISTIC PERSONALITY "FRONT" LYRICS OF B. SHAKHOVSKY

This article analyzes the corpus of lyric poems by B. Shakhovsky, dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. According to the observations of the authors of the study, the poet's «war» poems are works with a narrative-prose organization of the text. The article proves that they are characterized by plot and factual nature. It is concluded that this feature is explained by the general trends in the development of Soviet poetry in the 1940-1960s, as well as by the fact that the heroics of the time dictated the need to appeal not to the individual, but to the mass consciousness, requiring an expansion of the spectrum of psychologically effective artistic forms. This study shows the mechanisms of epization of the lyrics, analyzes the syncretic forms of the lyric epic. The authors of the article conclude that the style of «military» poems by B. Shakhovsky is expressive, aphoristic, declarative, rhetorical.

The Poetics of the Novella in Correlation to Vasyl Stefanyk's Artistic Vision

The article discusses correlations between artistic vision and poetics in Vasyl Stefanyk’s novellas. It is argued that the writer’s modernist aesthetic experience left its imprint on his literary works. The author concludes that the writer’s artistic vision followed a dynamic course of development correlating with the poetics of the novella and enriching the stylistic color scheme of his narrative prose.

On Some Features of Osip Mandelstam’s Representation in the Memories by Anna Akhmatova

The article presents some considerations on the motives for the creation and text strategies of Akhmatova’s memories of Mandelstam. The Pages from a Diary are viewed from two points of view: first, as a fragment of Akhmatova‘s memoir prose of a certain historical time, as an actualization of personal memory in order to correct collective cultural memory; secondly, as a supertext formed by numerous drafts, lists and variations.Within the framework of this genre, it is possible to single out a number of principles that Akhmatova is guided by when creating a memoir text: for example, a dialogical mode of a “conversation” with existing memories, documents, oral evidence; intention of myth-fighting, etc. A look at the Pages from a Diary as a work of narrative prose (based on Akhmatova’s definition of memories as a “short story”), called “The Death’s Way,” allows us to add the hero of her memoir to a number of “damned poets” that are not alien to Mandelstam.

La representación de la desigualdad social en la obra de Roberto Bolaño

The article deals with the issue of social inequality represented in two narratives of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, the fourth chapter »The part of the crimes« of the novel 2666 (2004) and A Little Lumpen Novelita (2002). It is shown that the perspectivism of literary representation is well compatible with certain sociological approaches and concepts, which for instance in the case of the term ›relative deprivation‹ (Runciman) include subjectivities, points of view, and comparisons. Thus, whereas statistics indicate the existence of social inequality only through numbers and coefficients, literature turns out to be an adequate medium to analyze its social effects. As a closer look at »The part of the crimes« reveals, the stories told in this chapter make visible not only the conditions of perception of inequality, but also the ignorance and the general invisibility of social emergency. Moreover, the article shows that social inequality represents a theme that frequently appears in the narrative prose of Roberto Bolaño and which therefore could enrich the reception of his work.

Toward a Poetics of Friendship

This introductory chapter traces the origin of the poetics of friendship to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and, by extension, Cicero’s De amicitia. Aristotle’s definition of the perfect friend in static categorical terms presents significant challenges to narrativization, that is, to a mode of literary expression based in conflict and change. Following Ullrich Langer, the chapter explores how Aristotle’s largely static categorical framework is filtered through the discourse of spiritual friendship in the Middle Ages, exposing the key problem of the perfect friend’s ultimate unknowability. Alternatively, following Cicero’s more fluid dialogical exploration of the problem of friendship, the chapter traces a second trajectory for a poetics of friendship that draws on Kathy Eden and Nancy Struever’s work on the more recognizably modern notion of intimacy. Taken together, these two genealogies provide the foundation for an evolving poetics of friendship in the narrative prose and dramatic works of early modern Spain.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE OF THE SHORT STORY IN THE WORKS OF AMERICAN AND BRITISH WRITERS.

This article pays attention to the issue development of the genre of the short story in the American and British literature. The authors of the short stories overcame difficulties with the extensive search for ways to update the figurative and expressive means powered to their common basic paradigm shift. Analysis of the researching devoted to the theory and history of the genre of the short story inevitably was powered by common understanding blur definition of its genre associated with general laws taken place in the literary process of the XIXth century. The high artistic level achieved the small prose in the England and its traits was fruitfully investigated by Russian and Western scholar and enlightened the experience manner of writers, therefore this genre should be considered as creative activity improved the unique technique, carried out in practice the experiments with a plot and themes finally successfully developed in their narrative prose.

Translating Style: Flaubert’s Influence on English Narrative Prose

General accounts of Gustave Flaubert’s influence on English-language writers have tended to assume that the publication of his fiction was enough to change the style of English prose. However, close examination of Flaubert’s reception in the second half of the nineteenth century shows that the novels and stories alone did not bring about a widespread shift in English prose style. Before such a transformation could happen, his theoretical statements about style in the correspondence needed to be shared with and interpreted for a new audience. Flaubert’s fiction did exert a qualified influence on the relatively few English-language writers who read and responded to it, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Henry James. However, not until the 1883 publication of his correspondence with George Sand, as well as significant critical mediation and translation (most notably by Guy de Maupassant, Walter Pater, and Eleanor Marx-Aveling), did his influence on English writers reach its full extent.