Сomposer’s Individuality as a Research Subject: Narrative Strategies of Art Historical Discourse

Abstract

Starting with A.J. Greimas’s actantial model, the paper examines a research discourse around the figure of an author in culture. The aim of the article is to discuss and shed light on the following questions: What is the logic of narration in stories about creators? What are narrative strategies commonly found in research texts? Discourse analysis is not applicable specifically to the idea of the author. It is interpreted in a phenomenological vein. It is proposed to differentiate the narrative structures of creative biographies that have developed in art history. In the one case, the subject of the story is an artistic person, in another—an artistic individual. The conceptual choice of a research angle includes various “narrative programs”. The creative mission of the “subject-personality”is viewed in search for answers to the challenges of the time and the achievement of the highest mastery, which is evaluated in culture.The path to success and recognition on a historical scale is the main strategy of the plot-narrative discourse about the artistic person. As an artistic individuality, the subject of the story is guided by the search for identity. His mission is clarified in the existential horizons of fate and requires self-realization in creativity and through creativity. The narrative program in this case is based on the stages of actualization, “building up” of identity, realized in creativity at the levels of “school”, “generation complex”, “Ego-reflection”, “fieldof illusion”, “myth-making.” Such a discursive multi-aspect representation allows, without losing integrity in the ideas about the phenomenon of artistic individuality, to come closer to understanding the semantic parameters of its being.