Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the discourse of G. Uspenskii’s mental illness. Drawing on R. Jakobson’s hypothesis that the writer’s insanity was associated with his tendency toward metonymy, I analyze Uspenskii’s hallucinations and delusional ideas. The dissociative identity disorder observed during his illness is explained in terms of the effect of a metonymic cognitive pattern that split the writer’s conception of sexuality. After determining that his ambivalent attitude toward sexuality is a semantic core of his delirium as narrative, I turn to the short story “Straightened,” which was written before his illness, and argue that its semantic structure was dictated by an attempt to find a non-contradictory way of looking at sexuality.

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