NARRATIVE SPECIFICITY OF THE SHORT STORY "HEY YOU, LITTLE BARRELL..." BY V. VYNNYCHENKO

Abstract

The paper discusses the methodological potential of narratology that extends beyond the boundaries of traditional poetics taking the text of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s short story "Hey you, little barrell..." as a case study. G. Genette’s definitions of the basic categories of narratology, such as story, discourse, anachronies, narrator’s types and functions, narrative distance and focalization are discussed. First and foremost, categories and paradigms introduced by G. Genette increase the possibilities of literary analysis. For example, there is no concept of a subject of vision (a focalizer) in traditional poetics. The paradigm of narrative perspective (focalization) developed by G. Genette is very important for studies of the narratives, besides, the narrative technique of modernism without this category is incomprehensible at all. Traditional poetics does not pay enough attention to anachrony, considering it together with other "off-plot elements", although analepsis and prolepsis are neither discursive nor descriptive. G. Genette presents detailed classification of analepsises and prolepsises, that determines the functionality of the analysis in context. Secondly, the paper clarifies, that the method of G. Genette’s narratology is not limited to tracing narrative categories as elements – it is also about their constant interrelation, i.e. the narrative model of the stories.
 Vynnychenko’s short story is analyzed in terms of correlations between telling, showing and talking, as well as displays of character’s discourse and attributive discourse. The artistic viability of anachronies (analepses and prolepses) is examined in the compositional and semantic aspects. The paper focuses on some specific features of Vynnychenko’s narrative style, such as dominance of mimesis over diegesis, as well as narrative distance and the author’s self-elimination by means of focalization (both the internal and external one) that are typical for modernist writing.