The modernity artistic metanarrative and the 19th century novel structure

Abstract

The article proposes the concept of "artistic metanarrative", similar to the well-known concept of Lyotard's metanarrative, but used to describe some mechanisms of the novel structure. The novel of the 19th century is considered as the central phenomenon of the modern culture, but due to the problematics of the moral norms conflict generated by the autonomous personality’s value representations of the new era of culture and the past moral principles, which remain active in the 19th century. For the novel hero, this is essentially a conflict of two cultures, - a moral conflict developing in his mind and behavior and more or less dramatically demanding the impossible from the hero to join the unjoinable. The subject of the analysis are the forms of the work scheme, where artistic reflection on the novel heterogeneous value vectors, relationships, narratives and cultural norms occurs in the perspective of some kind of ordering and some kind of value harmonization of the whole. In the categories of S. Broitman's historical poetics, this creative problem corresponds to the concept of "autonomous involvement", which determines the features of the poetics of artistic modality, but in the case of a "conflict of cultures" it acquires a special acuteness in the individual consciousness. Metanarrative reflection on the value relations operating in the artistic world of the novel occurs at the level of the organization of the text construction forms that creates a situation of self-generation of meaning in the field between the author and the reader. This meaning goes beyond the boundaries of the certain stories directly depicted in the novel and has no direct verbal expression. At the same time, at the metanarrative level of the novel's integrity, the practices of smoothing out the conflict by creating a composition of value relations, where opposites are relatively balanced, are quite obvious. The "conciliatory" nature of this relationship in the 19th Century novel does not guarantee the prospects of harmonious human existence, but makes one realize the problem in all its depth.