FLANEUR’S ANXIOUS MASCULINITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NOVELS “MIST” BY M. DE UNAMUNO AND “NOTES OF SNUB-NOSED MEPHISTOPHELES” BY V. VYNNYCHENKO

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, modernist literature starts to face the new existential issues unfolded in the urban environment. One of these issues is the phenomenon of anxious masculinity caused by the destruction of the patriarchal paradigm.
 In the literatures that were moving from the traditional type of culture to urban and modern, the writers described men who went out on the streets, converting themselves into the urban cultural type known as flânerie. The practice of ﾠflânerie, first presented in French literature, became popular in other European literatures as well, Spanish and Ukrainian not being exceptions. However, the type of flâneur in these two literatures still requires a scrupulous study.
 The paper provides a comparative analysis of M. de Unamuno’s “Niebla” (“Mist”) and V. Vynnychenko’s “Zapysky kyrpatoho Mefistofelia” (“Notes of Snub-Nosed Mephistopheles”) aiming to analyze the represented types of flâneurs. The novels demonstrate the specifics of flâneur’s discourse in Spanish and Ukrainian literatures, which were undergoing modernization processes. The comparison of such elements as writers’ urban experiences, protagonists’ interaction with the urban space, meeting with the modern women on the streets as the main plot element, and gender issues allowed defining different reflections on anxious masculinity and broadening European ﾠflânerie discourse. In addition, the analysis defined the protagonists of the novels as proto-ﾠ вneurs, which creates the perspective for further studies of the ﾠflânerie in Spanish and Ukrainian literatures.
 The results of the research provide arguments for the hypothesis that the ﾠflânerie is one of the modernist perception strategies, symptomatic for European culture.