THE DISCOURSE-AND-NARRATIVE POLYPHONY OF THE QUOTIDIAN AND THE PUBLIC-RELATED IN IAN MCEWAN’S SATURDAY (2005)

Abstract

In the English-written literature, the «one day novel» genre modification is represented by an appreciable number of novels. V.Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and J. Joyce’s Ulysses are the famous paragons of the subgenre. Ian McEwans’ Saturday also joins this category. The novel’s protagonist’s inner speech intensification as well as retrospective inclusions and digressions help the narrator to go beyond the conventional boundaries of the «one day novel» genre variety. The research undertaken in the given paper pursues exploration of of the possibility of combining the discourse and narrative elements of the literary text into one narrative entity. In the Ian McEwan’s circadian novel Saturday, the professional discourse of the neurosurgery as well as other discourses are skillfully and masterfully interwoven into the story-action-and-event governed textual terrain, that is into its narration. In the paper, the polysemantic structure of the terms «quotidian», «discourse», «narrative» has been analyzed. Also, such aspectual narratives of the novel as the quotidian narrative, medical, psychological, literary, mass media, topographical, musical, sports ones have been identified and some of them explored. Also, the plot-building function of the Neo-Victorian code of the novel has been specified and the Leitmotiff recurrence of some quotations, allusions and reminiscences has been dwelt on. In the paper, the principle of narrativization of a discourse is hypothesized; in keeping with it, the discourse-containedinformation is delivered through the action-and-event-based narrative. The discourse-governed knowledge is not distanced from the narrative, both are fused into one narrative whole. This principle accounts for a polyphonic interplay of discourses and narratives in the novel treated here.