Прецедентні феномени як репрезентанти американської самоідентичності у романі Стівена Кінга «Інститут»

Abstract

The phenomenon of precedence in the literary space appears as a linguistic-conceptual and linguistic-cultural construct includes the entire set of precedent names. The role of precedent names in the processes of identification and self-identification of the national-cultural dimension of a person is determined by those emotional-cognitive paradigms that are characteristic of a specific worldview type. Stephen King’s The Institute (2019), chosen as a source of precedent names, stands out against the rest of King’s books and is interesting for a significant number of means of expressing national self-awareness in the American cultural continuum. The explication of precedent names in the novel enables their description as specific cognitive structures of the representatives of American culture, based on Americans’ national-historical and socio-cultural experience, which is an element of self-identity. The Institute centres on the psychic kids kidnapped and put in brutal conditions to conduct experiments on them and serve the dark purposes of powerful men. Despite the novel’s genre belonging to horror, the poetics of which differs from the rest of King’s books and is interesting in that it does not contain most of the traditional bloody scenes, monsters and otherworldly phenomena, the focus of the article is another dimension of literary perception aimed at explicating the means of expressing national self-awareness in the American culture. Exploiting precedent names, with which the novel abounds, creates a recognisable cultural continuum that can serve as an additional way of modelling American self-identity. The study of the modes of representation of these phenomena in the novel has not yet been the subject of thorough scientific research but is also intended to become the basis for deepening the understanding of the complex interaction of emotional and cognitive components in the American worldview matrix through the functioning of the phenomenon of precedence, which determines the relevance of the article. This perspective allows us to consider precedent names not only as narratological elements but as means of accentuating the national, cultural and historical background. The cultural features of the author’s precedent world are characterised by their focus on creating the semantic space of the entire literary work, the expression of the author’s intentions and worldview, and are realised in the text through the functional specificity of the names included in it.