Looking for a Bookstore in Town: Intellectual Readers and the Death of “Gutenberg Galaxy”

The author analyses the problems of erosion of the book culture and the role of bookishness in the contemporary Western and Russian identities. While analysing the processes of disappearance and displacement of bookshops, the author presumes that culture of bookstores and communication subcultures in them cannot compete with networks and e-commerce. It is assumed that the logic of capitalism favours the progress of on-line bookstores, specialising in the serial and mass literature while independent bookstores prefer to sell intellectual, non-fiction, and academic books that are not interesting to consumer readers of mass culture. The author tries to analyse causes of private non-mass bookstores crisis. The author believes that intellectuals of 2000s were optimistic in their prognosis for the development of bookstores as spaces of cultural initiatives. By the end of 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of independent bookstores decreased significantly when on-line bookstores occupied their place. It is assumed that the cultures of reading, book collections, personal libraries lost the positions they held in the 20th century and even in the first decade of the 21st century. The author presumes that independent bookstores became cultural ghettos and intellectual reservations, when net bookstores became successful actors of the mass culture. In general, it is predicted that heterogeneous, regionally localised minority book cultures and reading strategies of the New Medievalism may replace the “mass” book as a cultural institution of a modern political imagined communities as elements of the dying Gutenberg Galaxy with its heterogeneous national identities.

Lexical-semantic peculiarities of Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels

The article touches upon various lexical-semantic peculiarities of Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels, specifically the nomination of people – characters of the novel. Such research are presented mostly from the point of view of literary studies. Scientists studied peculiar features of composition, genre, and plot of detective novels. The question of language and style of detective novels would uncommonly become a subject of research as they are regarded to as so-called mass literature, that is one that is focused on literature preferences of a wide circle of readers, in other words – it is a popular, entertaining, trivial literature. Linguistic research of detective works were mostly done on the material of literary texts of English and French languages, Ukrainian detectives were not a subject of such analysis. Questions of influence of genre peculiarities on the choice of linguistic units was also left beyond attention of researchers, which predetermines the relevance of the research. The source basis of the research consists of detective novels by Andrii Kokotiukha – one of the most notable Ukrainian detective authors. That is a series of retronovels, where the action takes place at the beginning of XX century in Lviv, and three novels about the modern period as well. The aim of the work is to explore lexical units that denote a person in Andrii Kokotiukha’s detective novels in terms of their expressive functions depending on the aim and genre features. Vocabulary of denomination of people is widespread in Kokotiukha’s works. Specifics of detective novels involves agile, dynamic nature of vocabulary and their text. Semantics of people’s names is diverse: its affiliation to the biological genus of humans; gender; age; family status; profession and occupation; status from the point of view of law; class and social structure of Ukrainian society; social status; financial situation; nationality or confession; affiliation to political parties; names of dead people, external signs; temporary sign. The author frequently uses descriptive compounds, metaphors, jargon, and colloquial language. A distinctive method of nominating a person which, according to genre requirements, creates mystery and enigma of presentation, is descriptive compounds with pronouns. Quantitative ratio of lexical groups mentioned depends on the peculiarities of the plot of specific novel. Nomination of people in A. Kokotiukha’s detective novels are components of dynamic and static descriptions, help convey the cultural-historical background, create the appropriate emotional tint. That is one of the elements which ensures that the text corresponds to the canons of detective genre.

Virgo-Death: from The Little Show-Booth by Alexander Blok to The Mistress of Death and The Lover of Death by Boris Akunin

The image of Death, embodied in the image of a beautiful maiden, is considered in the article through the analysis of references in the novel diptych by B. Akunin The Mistress of Death and The Lover of Death (the Erast Fandorin series) to one of the most important primary sources, the drama by A. Blok The Little Show-Booth. The study shows that Akunin's method of deformation was replaced by a postmodern deconstruction with a splitting into two images, of Columbine and of Maiden-Death, each of which is dominated by one of the hypostases of the heroine of The Little Show-Booth. These transformations appeal in their development to the opposition in Akunin’s novels of two points of view on fate, dialectically interacting, which correlate with the adventurous exposition and with the inevitability of personal destiny idea, oriented towards the “classical” tradition. The result of the analysis is a new formula of the genre of Akunin's novels, since their poetics goes out of the ordinary framework of criminal literature, as a transgressive phenomenon in the field of mass literature, as postmodern novel, in which the uncertain intertextuality accentuates, align with plot details, the problem of heroes’ self-identity.

Doctors as heroes of our time: On the ‘resuscitation’ of the occupational novel in modern mass literature

The article proposes an approach to consider modern mass literature portraying doctors in line with the revival of the tradition of the occupational novel. There are traces of similarities with the genre canon at the plot-compositional, figurative and stylistic levels of the text. The differences between contemporary works and the established Soviet model of the genre are also highlighted.

Ways of Othering: Literary Image of Russians in Habsburg Lviv

Ways of Othering: Literary Image of Russians in Habsburg LvivThe popular image of multicultural Lviv/Lwów in general, and under Habsburg rule in particular, usually excludes Russians from the group of genuine city dwellers. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the few portrayals of Russians in literary texts relating to the period of WWI. I compare Polish strategies of othering Russians as barbarians and an insidious element, prevalent in the literature for young readers of the 1920s, with the tendency of some Ukrainian authors to create a more nuanced image in the mass literature of the 2010s. The analysis of ways of othering Russians in the two identified groups of literary texts considers the geopolitical and national identity issues underpinning these trends. Kształtowanie obrazu Innego. Literacki obraz Rosjan w habsburskim LwowieW popularnym obrazie wielokulturowego Lwowa, zarówno polskim, jak i ukraińskim, do grona prawdziwych mieszkańców miasta zasadniczo nie mogą zostać zaliczeni Rosjanie. Głównym celem artykułu jest analiza nielicznych przykładów ich wizerunków w tekstach literackich dotyczących okresu I wojny światowej. Porównuję polskie strategie traktowania Rosjan jako „Innych” – barbarzyńców i wrogów, realizowane w literaturze dla młodych czytelników lat dwudziestych XX wieku, z ukraińską tendencją do tworzenia bardziej zniuansowanego obrazu w literaturze masowej ostatniej dekady. W analizie sposobów wykluczania Rosjan w tych dwóch grupach tekstów literackich uwzględnione zostają kwestie geopolityczne i problem tożsamości narodowej.

THE PECULIARITIES OF DONALD BARTHELME’S POSTMODERN STYLE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF A COLLECTION «SIXTY STORIES»)

The author analyzes the elements of postmodernism in D. Barthelme’s collection «Sixty Stories». It is determined that this stylistic dominant in the writer’s prose is mainly determined by such parameters as irony, collage and play. In addition, the genre specificity of his postmodern worldview is important, because it was in short epic genres that Barthelmi was able to realize his own aesthetic vision of literature in the second half of the XXth century. The writer experimented with form and content, seeking to adapt the poetic works of Thomas Stearns Eliot and the dramatic conflicts of Samuel Beckett, that is, to rethink the innovation of modernist authors to a new socio-historical situation. Barthelme uses almost all forms of humor, but the most common is irony. The ironic reappraisal of values in postmodernism ends with everything depreciating and becoming invaluable. The lists of catalogs in Barthelme’s texts are often presented as collages, and these collages are mostly made of verbal dreck (mass literature) and visual garbage. The situation in his texts is related to the need to react to an incomprehensible event, which forms a kind of Beckettian plot, when there is a consequence, but the reason is unclear, and plot is rather formalistic.

THE CHARACTER CONFRONTING THE AUTOR: TOWARD THE ISSUE OF AN UNDESCRIBDED METALITERARY PLOT

The article examines a specific metaliterary motif of the confrontation between ‘the author’ and the character. In this motif, both ‘the author’ and the character are portrayed as characters of the plot of the fictional world. The article analyses the emergence of the motif in modernist literature which subverts the realist poetics of the author’s omniscience. The author of the article employs the term ruman to refer to the novel genre where the author and the character enjoy equal rights. The term was first introduced by Miguel de Unamuno whose Mist (1914) was the first example of this version of metareflexive narrative. The article traces the development of the motif in modernist, postmodernist, and recently published contemporary novels. The differences in depicting of the relationship between the author and the character are explicated by reconstruction of the aesthetic and philosophical context of the time and the polemics with the dominating concepts of the Subject. Additionally, the article examines variations of the motif both in highbrow and mass literature focusing on such rumanistic pieces as novels by K. Vaginov, J. Fowles, V. Pelevin, L. Binet.

JOHN FOWLES’ NOVEL “THE COLLECTOR” IN THE PARADIGM OF “DOUBLE CODING”

The purpose of the article is to trace the creative dialogue between elite and mass literature in J.Fowles’ novel “The Collector” as a factor in creating genre modifications in the game field of postmodern literature.Methods. The complex methodology is used in the article. Structural-semantic, intertextual methods, mythopoetic approach, methods of close reading are used for the interpretation and analysis of works of art and essays by J.Fowles.Results. The article examines the strategies of the relationship between the mass and elite in J.Fowles’ novel “The Collector” (1963), which gained special development in the literature of the 20th century and was called “double coding”. Some aspects of J. Fowles’ creative self-identification are traced. The categories “double coding”, “genre polyphony”, and the socio-cultural concept of “success” are considered. It is revealed that the principle of “double coding” is genre-modeling at all levels of the structure of the work, its productivity in the plot-compositional organization of the novel, artistic embodiment of the external and internal themes is clarified. The interrelation of problems, plot and linguistic-stylistic components of the work is considered. It is proved that the author unfolds the model of human relations in an internal topic. In a complex set of problems, the author emphasizes the confrontation between “The Few and the Masses” (J.Fowles), which is manifested in a conflict between the “man of the masses” – Frederick Clegg and the intellectual and spiritual personality of the artist Miranda Gray. The confrontation takes place on a value-mental level, in a situation where two people choose between light and darkness, reason and intellectual limitations, beauty and utilitarianism, freedom and imprisonment, ugly pleasure from power and the injustice of the victim, nobility and meanness. The correlation between traditional genres of high literature and modern mass in the creation of new novel modifications is revealed.Conclusions. In J.Fowles’ postmodernist novel “The Collector”, the principle of “double coding” is one of those that models the genre, participates in text creation, and corresponds to the author’s communicative and receptive strategies. The study of the work in the paradigm of “double coding” proves that such a synthesis contributes to the intellectualization of mass literature, which loses its one-dimensionality, and adds readability to experimental literature by returning it to the plot, intrigue, methods of interest of the recipient. The author combines the objectivity of a traditional novel with the subjectivity of a new 20th century novel.Key words: elite and mass literature, external and internal theme, genre, parable, polygenre. Мета статті – простежити творчий діалог між елітарною й масовою літературами у романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» як фактор творення жанрових модифікацій у ігровому полі літератури постмодернізму. Методи. У роботі використано комплексну методологію. Для інтерпретації та аналізу художніх творів і есеїстики Дж.Фаулза застосовано структурно-семантичний, інтертекстуальний методи, міфопоетичний підхід, методики «пильного читання» (close reading). Результати. У статті досліджено стратегії співвідношення масового й елітарного в романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» (1963), що набули особливого розвитку в літературі ХХ століття й одержали назву «подвійне кодування». Простежено деякі аспекти творчої самоідентифікації Дж.Фаулза. Розглянуто категорії «подвійне кодування», «жанрова поліфонія», соціокуль-турне поняття «успіх». Виявлено, що принцип «подвійного кодування» є жанромоделюючим на усіх рівнях структури твору, з’ясовано його продуктивність у сюжетно-композиційній організації роману, художньому втіленні теми зовнішньої та теми внутрішньої. Розглянуто взаємозв'язок проблематики, сюжетних і мовно-стильових компонентів твору. Доведено, що у темі внутрішній автором розгортається модель людських взаємин. Ускладному комплексі проблем автор акцентує протистояння «Небагатьох та Маси» (Дж.Фаулз), що оприявнено у конфлікті «людини маси» – Фредеріка Клегга та інтелектуально-духовної особистості художниці Міранди Грей. Протистояння відбувається на ціннісно-ментальному рівні, уситуації вибору двох людей між світлом та пітьмою, розумом та інтелектуальною обмеженістю, красою й утилітаризмом, свободою та ув’язненням, потворним задоволенням від влади і безправ'ям жертви, шляхетністю та ницістю. Виявлена кореляція між традиційними жанрами високої літератури та сучасної масової у створенні нових романних модифікацій. Висновки. У постмодерністському романі Дж.Фаулза «Колекціонер» принцип «подвійного кодування» є одним із тих, що моделює жанр, бере участь у текстотворенні, відповідає комунікативно-рецептивним стратегіям автора. Дослідження твору в парадигмі «подвійного кодування» доводить, що саме такий синтез сприяє інтелектуалізації масової літератури, яка втрачає свою одно-вимірність, та додає читабельності літературі експериментальній завдяки поверненню їй сюжетності, інтриги, прийомів зацікавлення реципієнта. Автор поєднує властиву традиційному роману об’єктивність зі суб’єктивністю нового роману ХХ сторіччя. Ключові слова: елітарна і масова література, тема зовнішня і внутрішня, жанр, притча, поліжанровість.

FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL “DEATH OF A HERO” BY RICHARD ALDINGTON

The literary process in the first half of the twentieth century acquires new styles, new techniques, it combines modernism and realism. For literary works, fantastic absurdity becomes characteristic, as a new experimental form. If in the nineteenth century, literary works described clear objective subjects, for example, love, evil, family and social relations, then in the updated literature of the twentieth century, abstract psychological methods are used primarily to describe a particular thing. The First World War became the cardinal theme of the art in the first half of the twentieth century, determined the personal destinies and formed the artistic personality of such writers as Richard Aldington. The novel “Death of a Hero”, which appeared in 1929, put the author – at that time already a well-known poet, critic and translator – into a list of prominent English novelists. “Death of a Hero” is the key work, created by the writer in the first two decades of his literary activity. This is a turning point and the most notable milestone. The shortcomings of the novel are now more obvious, but its merits are still indisputable; the sincerity of the confession, the passion and persuasiveness of the denunciations, the spontaneity and originality of the artistic expression. This book is written with the blood of a heart-dejected, sorrowful, but sympathetic. Literature is filled with a special philosophy. The main themes used in literature are war, revolution, problems of religious perception, and most importantly – the tragedy of a person, a person who, due to circumstances, has lost his inner harmony. Lyrical heroes become more daring, decisive, extraordinary, and unpredictable. At the beginning of the 20th century, mass literature appears. Works that did not have a high artistic value, however, were widespread among the population. In this article we will try to describe the images of women in the novel “Death of a Hero”.