COMPOSITIONAL AND NARRATIVE PECULIARITIES OF THE POSTMODERN NOVEL (BASED ON D. MITCHELL’S NOVEL “CLOUD ATLAS”)

Abstract

The article focuses on establishing genre, compositional and narrative features of the postmodern novel based on the novel “Cloud Atlas” by D. Mitchell. It is argued that postmodernism in literature gets impacted not only on the content (themes of spiritual values loss, loss of contact with space, disharmonious states, multiplicity of worlds and their interpretations, relativity and illusiveness of the universe) but also on the form (certain structural and compositional characteristics) of literary works. It has been found out that a non-linear multiply fragmented composition of the novel in question is formed owing to interchangeable alteration of diegetic planes “deep down”, every following plane serving the hypodiegesis for the preceding one. This way a hyper-hypodiegetic entity is being created as a vertical structure of the main architectonic blocks of the novel. Variety of genres within the compositional structure of narratives has been stated, from a diary through a correspondence, a detective story to science fiction utopia. The type of each of the six narratives has been substantiated as a combination of the two factors: a narrator’s or a personage’s relation to the story told, on the one hand, and a narrator’s status concerning the level of narration, on the other. It has been described the realization of such structural and compositional devices, which contribute to the textual categories of unity and conceptuality, as: the device of mirroring composition, the device of montage, using a literary image as a means of coherence in the novel, the device of coordinating, the device of circular composition. The device of mirroring composition which serves to reinforce the motif of power and human greed, the device of montage which links different parts of the novel through a common emotional and content thread – the motif of a soul reincarnation and cyclic historical events and the device of using a literary image (identical inner world, a recognizable protagonists’ soul acting in all the six narratives) ensure textual coherence in the novel.