Жанрова специфіка, проблемно-тематичний аспект і поетика short stories Грема Гріна

Abstract

Дисертація присвячена комплексному дослідженню жанрової специфіки, проблемно-тематичного аспекту і поетики short stories ‒ малої прози Грема Гріна, до складу якої входять п'ятдесят чотири твори різної жанрової приналежності та які до цього часу не стали об'єктом серйозного і системного наукового осмислення. Відповідно до вперше здійснюваного в українському літературознавстві завдання комплексного дослідження short stories Г.Гріна в дисертації скореговано спiввiдношення понять story - short stories - новела - озповідання - мала проза. Узагальнено сучасні розробки теорії жанру і уточнено трактування жанрових моделей новели і оповідання, з урахуванням яких вперше здiйснено жанрову атрибуцю всіх short stories письменника та їх розмежування на новели (двадцять один твір) та оповідання (тридцять творів). Розглянуто еволюцію й окреслено масштабність і ідейно-смислову значущість тематичного діапазону новел і оповідань, виявлені його основні вектори та виокремлено проблемно-тематичнi комплекси і їх лейтмотиви. Проаналізовано такі найважливіші компоненти наратологічної стратегії гріновських новел і оповідань, як принципи створення персонажної типології, просторово-часової картини художнього світу (хронотоп) і використання форм та засобів комічного в їх формально-змістовнiй структурі, і доведено, що гріновська модель типології персонажа і тип його просторово-часової картини світу базуються на принципах естетики реалізму. The thesis presents a comprehensive study of genre specificity, the subject-matter aspect and the poetics of short stories – short fiction by Graham Greene, which comprises fifty-three (full English edition) – fifty-four (full edition of French translations) works. Both scientific and critical reflection and readers’ perception of G. Greene, prove that the author remains one of the greatest, if not the greatest, representatives of the English novel of the 20th century. His novels «Stamboul Train», «Brighton Rock», «The Heart of the Matter», «The Power and the Glory», «The Quiet American», «The End of the Affair», «Our Man in Havana», «The Comedians», «The Honorary Consul», «The Human Factor», «Monsignor Quixote» have gained the world fame, and some of them were translated into Ukrainian. At the same time, despite the fact that the author started his creative work with short fiction, which includes novellas and short stories, and he kept writing them throughout his life, his short stories have not become the object of serious and large-scale scientific studies yet, neither in general, nor in Ukrainian literary criticism, which leaves Greene completely unknown as a master of short fiction with only one of his novellas having been translated into Ukrainian. The research objective is to define the genre affiliation of works that make the corpus of Graham Greene’s short stories, to identify and describe their subject-matter complexity and to carry out a poetological analysis of novellas and stories in order to determine artistic means in their functional, content and aesthetic role. The scientific novelty of the results lies in the fact that the thesis has been the first to introduce Greene’s short stories, such a vast layer of artistic creative work of the classic of the world literature of the 20th century, into Ukrainian literary discourse – they had neither been made the object of studies of Ukrainian criticism before, nor had been translated into Ukrainian. For the first time, the genre attribution and differentiation of the works that constitute short fiction, have been carried out, selected and described in accordance with the genre-forming features (those that bear the genre) of the type of Greene’s novella and the type of Greene’s story, their relationship with tradition and their inherent specificity, in particular, the realistic principle in depicting characters, time and space relations, attribution to likelihood, which is created by selecting concise, but expressive details and characteristics in describing characters and events, precise psychologization, application of oneiric and fantastic elements, paradoxical statements and situations and a wide range of the comic. Besides, for the first time, the short fiction has been analyzed from the point of view of its subject-matter content revealing its main ideological and motivational vectors, which prove an extraordinary broad range of interests of the writer regarding life conflicts of a man of the 20th century. The most typical topics of the short fiction have been identified as the following: the theme of dramatic living conditions, solidarity and sympathy; the epoch-driven theme of the ex-territoriality of a personal identity, which can be called the «Englishman abroad»; the theme of religion and faith; the theme of death as a result of life drama and as a mystical phenomenon; the theme of love and sexual relations; the theme of childhood (childhood disappointments, phobias, aggression, dreams); a man in war; espionage and betrayal, mysterious and abnormal phenomena; the theme of the future. At the same time, many motifs intersect with one another practically in all themes, leading to the conclusion that this polymotivity, which gives novellas and stories an ideological and semantic depth, makes a distinctive feature of Greene's short prose. In addition, it broadens the understanding of the writer's artistic way of thinking: the subject of his thoughts covers worries of a child, psychology of a child, and the world of child’s fantasies, on the one hand; and the possible future of humanity and the indestructibility of religious consciousness, the catastrophic consequences of scientific and technological progress, on the other. The latter two topics are not inherent in the writer's long works of narrative fiction at all. The analysis of the subject-matter and motif content of short stories shows that the horizons of his artistic thinking are much wider than it used to be believed. At the same time, the motifs of escape, suicide, betrayal, cheating, depression and mental traumas of childhood, which are emphasized by a number of Anglo-American critics, do not play the leading and determining role in the general atmosphere of the artistic world of Greene’s fiction at all. On the contrary, the dominating motifs include courage in the struggle against hardships of life and ingenuity in overcoming them; keeping a sense of dignity, compassion and empathy for characters who find themselves in difficult or extreme situations; sympathy for heroes who have not lost their need for tender feelings and affection; mockingly satirical or ironic attitude towards callousness, snobbery, immorality and, conversely, a good-naturedly humorous attitude towards the natural manifestations of human nature. The problematic field of the subject-matter of short fiction covers challenging aspects of the contemporary to the writer epoch: philosophical-existential, moral-ethical, and socio-economic collisions typical of a man of the 20th century; religion, religious beliefs and their influence on human behavior; psychological and pragmatic motives of human behavior; phenomena of life and death; the future of the world order. The specificity of the space and time of character`s of typology and organization (chronotope) of the narrative of short prose is revealed. Its features include such moments as elaborate description of the place and details of space, in particular exotic loci, in which more than a third of novellas and short stories take place; relief and visualization of characters; the use of time plans as the most important characteristics of the characters, revealing their past and simultaneously matching their lives with the certain historical period of time. The main forms and means of the comic, used by the writer in almost half of the works of short prose, are identified. It is noted that Greene addresses the means of the comic in his novels more often than in the stories, which confirms the opinion of the majority theorists of the genre that the comic is one of the genre-forming features of a novella. In general, the comic in Greene's prose acquires an important content-semantic and aesthetic function, giving it a philosophical depth and a life-affirming character. Thus, short stories, or short prose, represented by the genres of novella and story, do not make an ordinary product of Greene's creativity, being just a «sketch» for his novels, but they represent an original and self-valuable part of his short fiction with its subject-matter and stylistic diversity, which proves him to be one of the best, if not the best, storytellers of his time.