O. Kornienko. Play-element poetics in literature

Abstract

The author of the book review argues that, contrary to I. Huizinga’s belief, the play mode of 20th c. literature, especially in its earliest and latest periods, is more pronounced. Russian literature, including its non-official variety, is compared with its foreign peers, starting from antiquity (visual poetry). Along with wide-spread play-elements, the author singles out fairly uncommon ones: to illustrate the use of a lipogram, she references G. Perec’s novel La Disparition (1969), whose 300 pages are written without using the letter e, the most common letter in French. She also follows numerous remarkable features of national or ethnic mentalities reflected in speech. The author describes the principles of encoding, common-usage interpretations, text reductions and thickenings, volume restrictions, etc. She pays special attention to the interaction of literature with non-verbal artistic techniques, especially its synthesis with painting (and more broadly, with images) and music. The book gives examples of the Internet penetrating the system of literary genres.