NARRATIVE SPECIFICITY OF THE SHORT STORY "HEY YOU, LITTLE BARRELL..." BY V. VYNNYCHENKO

The paper discusses the methodological potential of narratology that extends beyond the boundaries of traditional poetics taking the text of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s short story "Hey you, little barrell..." as a case study. G. Genette’s definitions of the basic categories of narratology, such as story, discourse, anachronies, narrator’s types and functions, narrative distance and focalization are discussed. First and foremost, categories and paradigms introduced by G. Genette increase the possibilities of literary analysis. For example, there is no concept of a subject of vision (a focalizer) in traditional poetics. The paradigm of narrative perspective (focalization) developed by G. Genette is very important for studies of the narratives, besides, the narrative technique of modernism without this category is incomprehensible at all. Traditional poetics does not pay enough attention to anachrony, considering it together with other "off-plot elements", although analepsis and prolepsis are neither discursive nor descriptive. G. Genette presents detailed classification of analepsises and prolepsises, that determines the functionality of the analysis in context. Secondly, the paper clarifies, that the method of G. Genette’s narratology is not limited to tracing narrative categories as elements – it is also about their constant interrelation, i.e. the narrative model of the stories. Vynnychenko’s short story is analyzed in terms of correlations between telling, showing and talking, as well as displays of character’s discourse and attributive discourse. The artistic viability of anachronies (analepses and prolepses) is examined in the compositional and semantic aspects. The paper focuses on some specific features of Vynnychenko’s narrative style, such as dominance of mimesis over diegesis, as well as narrative distance and the author’s self-elimination by means of focalization (both the internal and external one) that are typical for modernist writing.

The Animal Eye and Refugee Vulnerability in Wajdi Mouawad’s Anima

Anima, by Lebanese-born Canadian-raised author Wajdi Mouawad, is a road novel that takes the reader through different locations on the North American continent in order to explore the darkest side of humankind. This approach will focus on the provocative narrative technique used by Mouawad, filtered through the eyes of a significant number of animals and insects, in order to consider the different representations of vulnerability that articulate the text. In the novel, animals and insects are not only the narrators but also fundamental characters. As this analysis will show, their vulnerability represents the uncertainty of fate in contemporary society, being in the hands of those apparently superior creatures that decide when they can live and when they have to die. As an example of a vulnerable text, Anima relies on the theatricality of this animal Greek chorus to represent the need for humans to undergo a process of animalization. The protagonist, Wahhch Debch, reaches a stage of symbiosis with his animal side that allows him to transcend his vulnerability as a child refugee and as an adult who lost his wife, and this new sense of animal self serves him as an empowering element to break ties with his past.

Detective Fictions: The ‘baby-farming detective’ in Britain, 1867–97

This article examines a series of investigations into the activities of women engaged in the provision of paid childcare and collectively labelled with the term ‘baby-farmer’. This paper looks at the practice of writers representing themselves as ‘baby-farming detectives’. Along with exploring the use of the detective investigation as a stylistic device, it will contend that the strictures it imposed informed the relationship these writers have with paid child-carers. The article also explores how the notion of ‘detectives’ and ‘suspects’ spoke of an assumed right to subject working-class women to inspection. It concludes that these detective fantasies were ultimately unsuccessful as they were unable to solve either the cases they encountered, or the symbolic problem of baby-farming, leaving these narratives curiously unresolved and their writers impotent. This article not only seeks to explain how and why the link between pecuniary childcare and infant murder was forged and maintained but asserts that this narrative technique has wider implications for scholars of nineteenth-century culture.

The Pursuit of Wholeness in Maurice Gee's Fiction for Children

<p>Towards the end of Maurice Gee's Prowlers Noel Papps comments: "A morning on my sundeck passes like the turning of a wheel. Time present and time past, now and then, bring their motions into agreement and I know the joys of congruency " (p. 217).[2] Here Noel describes a fulfilment which is circular and in which antitheses are brought together in harmony. A scientist, he has not always felt such joy. For much of his life he has been concerned with breaking things down and analysing them according to dry chemical formulae. Yet this process has been necessary for understanding, and in effect for creating the whole novel he narrates. Noel Papps seems to reflect Gee who is also concerned with division and forming a whole rounded book. This thesis examines Gee's concept of parts and their possible congruency. The Introduction considers Gee's novels for adults, especially those in which protagonists, speaking for Gee, describe the process involved in creating a whole work, whether literary, non-fictional or artistic. Their descriptions contextualise my exploration of Gee's pursuit of wholeness in his fiction for children. I turn first to the O trilogy in which the Motherstone is an explicit image of balance. Thereafter the focus is on Gee's five historical novels, in which the presence of lived experiences, real history, allusions to creative works, characters' illusions, and the universal are considered at length. Drawing on interviews, photographs, archival material, and non-fictional, historical, and literary texts, I attempt to establish the authenticity of Gee's reproduction of these dimensions and, where there are discrepancies, their effects. The narrative technique involved in bringing diverse dimensions together is also examined. Finally I consider patterning across Gee's five historical novels as a representation of a whole work.</p>

The Pursuit of Wholeness in Maurice Gee's Fiction for Children

<p>Towards the end of Maurice Gee's Prowlers Noel Papps comments: "A morning on my sundeck passes like the turning of a wheel. Time present and time past, now and then, bring their motions into agreement and I know the joys of congruency " (p. 217).[2] Here Noel describes a fulfilment which is circular and in which antitheses are brought together in harmony. A scientist, he has not always felt such joy. For much of his life he has been concerned with breaking things down and analysing them according to dry chemical formulae. Yet this process has been necessary for understanding, and in effect for creating the whole novel he narrates. Noel Papps seems to reflect Gee who is also concerned with division and forming a whole rounded book. This thesis examines Gee's concept of parts and their possible congruency. The Introduction considers Gee's novels for adults, especially those in which protagonists, speaking for Gee, describe the process involved in creating a whole work, whether literary, non-fictional or artistic. Their descriptions contextualise my exploration of Gee's pursuit of wholeness in his fiction for children. I turn first to the O trilogy in which the Motherstone is an explicit image of balance. Thereafter the focus is on Gee's five historical novels, in which the presence of lived experiences, real history, allusions to creative works, characters' illusions, and the universal are considered at length. Drawing on interviews, photographs, archival material, and non-fictional, historical, and literary texts, I attempt to establish the authenticity of Gee's reproduction of these dimensions and, where there are discrepancies, their effects. The narrative technique involved in bringing diverse dimensions together is also examined. Finally I consider patterning across Gee's five historical novels as a representation of a whole work.</p>

Transformation From Aesthetics to Activism: An Analysis of Select Dalit Women Personal Narratives

Dalit resistance gained prominence in postcolonial India through Dalit literature, with Dalit life writing emerging as a significant way to address ongoing problems and issues faced by Dalit communities. Dalit personal narratives are not mere reflections into the past but lived experiences with a timely and current sociological base. Dalit narratives have become a platform for social and political activism against various hegemonic discourses that otherwise exclude the experiences of the Dalit population. Moreover, Dalit women suffer many layers of oppression and violence, and there is a necessity to understand the intersectionality of Dalit women’s realities. Hence this article analyses select personal narratives of two Dalit women writers: P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change ([1989] 2006) and ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ ([1999] 2006); and Bama’s Karukku ([1992] 2005). The ₹Author’s Notes: Gowri’ is a reflection on The Grip of Change and the two narratives are collectively referred to as The Grip of Change. This article attempts to understand the extent to which Dalit personal narratives transform from aesthetics to activism. This article analyses the narrative technique and form used in the narratives and explores how the narratives expose embodied issues to foster activism in and through the content.

Language and Style of Sunetra Gupta’s Fictional Narratives

My aim in this paper is to offer a critical discussion on certain linguistic and stylistic aspects in the fictional pieces by Sunetra Gupta, an important Bengali diaspora author based in Oxford. In her debut novel, ‘Memories of Rain’ as well as in her others, Gupta effortlessly intersperses prose with poetry; her writing is complex, fusing stream of sensuous poetic imagery with stream of consciousness. A powerful delivery of interior monologue, figurative language, and continuous time-shifts invites the novelist’s comparison with Virginia Woolf. Memory becomes a vital player in many of her novels, be it Memories of Rain, Moonlight into Marzipan or So Good in Black. Giving it the centre stage automatically leads her towards an experimental narrative technique, since memory – a highly subjective and elastic category blending fantasy with the past – keeps intervening in the linear flow of the plot. Interestingly, her stream-of-consciousness technique transforms language and punctuation marks from normative linguistic symbols into poignant emotional tools. By exploring the limits of ambiguity in language, as I argue here, Gupta has evolved a personal literary idiom in which prose is pushed into a territory formerly accessible only to poetry. The issue of intertextuality is also discussed, with special reference to Memories of Rain where the influence and interplay of diverse texts provide the novelists context and meaning, and shape its narrative and characters.