Features of the narrative structure of the novel of the postmodern era on the example of Barry Unsworth's novel "Moralite"

Sadovnikova Yuliya Mikhailovna Postgraduate student of the Literature Department of Kaluga State University named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky 248000, Russia, Kaluzhskaya Oblast' oblast', g. Kaluga, per. Voskresenskii, 4 OrangeLioness@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Barry Unsworth's work is not given due attention in Russian literary criticism. The appeal to the works of the writer is rare both abroad and in Russia. In our opinion, the work of the English writer deserves more research attention. Among the most significant works dedicated to Barry Unsworth, it is worth noting the works of Maria Jesus Martinez Alfaro [15: 79-92], who points out the similarities between the novel and medieval plays about morality; Richard Rankin Russell [17:221-239] suggesting that the structure of the novel repeats the stages of repentance, eventually leading to confession and absolution; and, finally, J. Cameron Moore [16:321-340] discussing how the narrator is affected by his encounter with evil even after the end of the action.

Saburova asserts that "the novel is characterized by a special chronotope based on the historical affiliation of the time and place of the novel, as well as an ethical conflict related to the problems of crime and punishment, changing moral norms of late medieval society and intertwined with the detective element" [9. 32].

Calling the novel "Moralite", Barry Unsworth did not try to show any particular play, traveling actors earned their living by playing mysteries and miracles. M. Boccardi [14: 204-213] believes that the word "morality" is a strong word in the English language of the twenty-first century; the novel tells about various types of morality that they may arise from different ideas about acting. Barry Unsworth creates a story based on real events, which was not typical of the genre of morality, using allegorical characters. This determines the relevance of the proposed article.

In the period of the twentieth century, genres of literature use already existing genre models. M.M. Bakhtin noted "the novel's special ability to displace some genres and introduce others into its own design, rethinking and re-interpreting them." [3. 196]

The transformation of genre forms is characteristic of modern literature. Barry Unsworth's novel is of interest because it synthesizes a combination of several genres and simultaneously recreates the picture of the formation of a new genre for that era – morality. Polygenre is characteristic of postmodernism. Having designated the genre of his work as a "moral novel", Barry Unsworth takes us back to the Middle Ages. According to the laws of the genre of the genre, the title should traditionally express the author's position and convey the main content of the work. Calling the novel "Morality Play", the author proclaims the leading genre – morality (a special kind of dramatic representation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance). The author skillfully weaves elements of several genres into the narrative, namely an adventurous novel, historical, detective, there are even hints of love lines in the novel.

The hybridity of genres is determined by the theme: the theme of the transformation of the generally accepted genre, the theme of obsession with the profession, creative searches, the influence of power. The leading theme in the novel is crime and punishment, which helps to reveal the characters' characters and become a participant in the "Game".

The novel "Moralite" received the Swedish Detective Academy Award / Svenska Deckarakademins pris, 1997 // Best Crime Novel in Translation (Martin Beck Award) (translated by Elisabeth Zila).

N.A. Solovyova rightly notes that "theatricality and acting are very indicative of the English mentality, as well as subtle irony, sharp satire." ^[10] Studying the features of narration in postmodern literature, N.G. Tebenkova draws attention to the fact that "uncertainty, understatement and the presence of voids in the narrative space of the work not only supports the interest of the reader, restoring the logic and sequence of those events that have already occurred and eager to predict, anticipate their further development, they are recognized the only possible narrative option." ^[12]

According to B. Groys, "the strategy, which is commonly called postmodern, consists in a conscious refusal to focus on originality" ^[4.1]. From which it follows that when creating a work, the author understands that his own text is a reflection of someone else's. Followers of postmodernism believe that every newly created text is written on top of the old text. "At first glance, the whole structure of the postmodern novel appears as something that causes the denial of the narrative strategy of realistic discourse: the denial of cause-and-effect relationships, the linearity of the narrative, the psychological behavior of the character" [5. 156]. This feature of postmodern writing has become one of the most easily recognizable signs among the works of other influences, which is why it has become so popular among writers.  I would also like to note that in the works of postmodernism, the author tries to combine the works and styles of different literature, the so-called high and low, so that the line between them becomes as little noticeable as possible. However, this feature of the creation of the work may seem difficult to perceive, because it is addressed to a more erudite reader. This may lead to a misunderstanding of the work itself as a whole.

 The main part

In the presented work, the detective influence of the construction of a postmodern novel will be considered, in which readers are involved in the active process of reconstructing the incident, and the main character finds a solution to all the mysteries and riddles

For our study, the definition of a detective from the Dictionary of postmodernism is relevant: "postmodern detectives do not end with the traditional discovery of a mystery (as it was "in fact"), - the desired product turns out to be dissolved in the very procedural nature of the search. The modern detective, thus, not only bears the stamp of the specifics of postmodern culture, but also acts as a special genre-semantic field for the implementation of its program premises."

At the heart of any detective story there are three main plot-forming elements: crime, investigation and solution.The investigation takes a leading place. Characters and their characters fade into the background.

 I. crime. According to the plot of the novel, a twelve-year-old boy, Thomas Wells, was murdered in a city in which traveling comedians find themselves on their way to Durham. His body was found on the road leading to the city, the sheriff, who is justice, found the weaver's daughter guilty. She will be hanged. Traveling comedians are surprised by the fact that "justice is done quickly in this city" [2. 18]. The female criminal was tried and sentenced two days after the crime.

 II. investigation. The genre of the detective novel is based on the investigation. The detective is investigating. In Barry Unsworth's novel, all the members of the troupe try on the roles of detectives, but only Niklas (on whose behalf the narrative is conducted in the novel) eventually learns the composition of the crime and the name of the real criminal, and, possibly, the true causes of the crime.

The reason for the murder, as the investigation suggested, was a purse with money, with which the boy was walking home late at night. It is noteworthy that when the boy's body is found, the purse is not found. The witness in the case is a Benedictine monk, the confessor of the Lord, who saw a woman "in the pasture near the place where the boy was found" [2. 40].

Barry Unsworth offers the reader the leader of the troupe of comedians Martin for the role of the chief detective. This character is confident in his actions and is ready to take risks to achieve the goal. Lacking the analytical abilities to investigate a crime, he is obsessed and inspired by the news of a murder. The purpose of Martin's actions is not the investigation itself, but a chance through which you can make a genre revolution. He remembers the past success of the performances, because his father was also a comedian. Martin understands that they are strapped for funds, they do not have large-scale decorations, but these are external attributes. There is a solution: they need a new text that no one has played before them. Martin suggests "playing murder" as a moral. They need to interest the citizens, make them partners in the performance. Then there will be more than six of them.

Analyzing the crime, the comedians come to the conclusion that everything "was done in a big hurry, even the funeral of the boy. He rested in the ground yesterday, less than two days after he was found" [2. 42].

Everyone in this city obeys the Lord, and all the events covered by the mystery of the crime are connected with the lord: the girl was accused by the Lord's confessor, the boy was buried by the Lord's steward. It is surprising that the Judge from York stayed at the hotel, and not in the Lord's chambers. Comedians come to the conclusion that these are links of different chains: "One thing is clear, he is not a guest of the Lord," Tobias said. — Otherwise he would have stayed in the castle" [2. 42].

It is this fact that indicates that the Judge is not related to the Lord, which means that the judging will be fair.

"The game about Thomas Wells", which Martin conceived, will help not only to earn money, but also to find out all the details about the real killer and free an innocent girl. The townspeople know how the "Thomas Wells Game" will end, but no one knows how it started. The comedians offer to investigate together.

At first, comedians present a "false game" to the audience, but they want to make it true. Showing the "Game" three times, with each new performance plunging deeper into the ruthless murder that took place in this city. Unknowingly, the actors are participating in an even larger "game", conceived by the king himself. They make changes to their play, transforming the plot on the go, and involve the audience in the course of the investigation. Thus, the audience turns into detectives. The audience does not allow the reader to be misled, they are also accomplices and are interested in the interactive course of the presentation.

 III. THE SOLUTION. Inspired by the success of the Game about Thomas Wells, and in the light of the revealed details, Martin persuades to play the play for the second time, calling it "A true game about Thomas Wells." The troupe has weighty arguments in favor of refusal: "It's too dangerous," Tobias said. —The Lord's confessor, the Lord's steward... if it wasn't the girl who killed him, the one who killed him is somewhere nearby. And I have a feeling that he is under the protection of ..." [2. 67]

The comedians are unwitting guests (they had to stop on the way to bury a comrade, they could have ended up in another city where a crime would not have been committed) in a city held by Lord Richard de Guise, who is "famous everywhere for giving alms to the poor, and also for how he punishes criminals, and for a pious life". [2. 17] Barry Unsworth focuses on the fact that Sir Richard honors the law, but the comedians see the opposite: "no one cares about the death of the boy there" [2. 65]. The townspeople are waiting for the jousting tournament, which is arranged by Lord de Guise. Comedians note that "this is all they talk about, and about the ailments of the young gentleman — he is the only son, and his name is William" [2. 65]. The surrounding people are surprised by the fact that the Valiant knight William "did not go out to practice his horse for spear fights, and did not inspect his armor, which is strange; everyone says he is crazy about tournaments and became famous for his victories on them" [2. 65].

The killer in "Moralite" turns out to be a character with whom we are not familiar. His name is rarely mentioned in the work, thanks to which the reader's guesses about the real culprit of the crime are reduced to zero. We should not forget that the genre is based on morality, so the author's goal is to show the moral side of the person who committed the crime. The murderer turns out to be the son of Lord de Guise. There is not much information about him, but thanks to some facts, we can draw certain conclusions about his character and manner of behavior. William is the "flower of chivalry", one can assume that he, a vain man from high society, confident in his strength and inviolability, no one at tournaments has ever managed to knock him out of the saddle.

The solution of the crime becomes available to the reader in the dialogue between Niklas and the Judge. It turns out that Thomas Wells, the boy whom William de Guise strangled for his own amusement, was infected with the plague. That's the solution to the very ailment that the townspeople were talking about. The accused girl was acquitted after the real killer was found.

Amateur detectives, not having detective skills, wanted to find the truth and overcome injustice. Once in the castle of Lord de Guise, playing the third version of the "Game of Thomas Wells", blinded by love for a deaf-mute innocent girl, Martin puts on a mask of Pride and

"Martin, in his madness, decided to denounce the judge, sitting among the shadows on the throne of justice, it is important to walk in front of the Lord and imitate the voice of the Lord, who squeezed us in his fist. In itself, this is a deadly insult. But there was more to it than just an insult. If this triple combination really existed, then, based on logic, only one explanation could be found: Sir Richard de Guise did not want anyone to see the body of Thomas Wells, because it contained traces of something, and the Lord knew it, he knew it because it was in the Simon Damian delivered a live boy to his hands" [2. 90].

Martin wanted to involve Lord in the investigations, to make him a participant in the play. Make a criminal detective out of the father.

The finale of the novel remains open, the fate of the comedians in the Lord's castle is unknown. Despite the fact that the identity of the criminal is revealed, the novel ends with a sense of anxiety, frustration and uncertainty, which distinguishes it from both moral and classic detective stories.

Niklas Barber, the main character-narrator who was able to escape from the Lord's castle, tells everything to the judge from York. Playing murder, they almost solved the crime. The Benedictine's lie was revealed, so "they dressed him in a penitent's shirt, tied his hands and hanged him. And we thought that it should be punishment for the fact that he allowed this murdered man to be found. But only the powerful can punish in this way, those who have received their power from God or from the king." [2: 93]

The judge, who came from York, is also a detective to some extent, he is assigned to follow Lord de Guise, whose behavior worries the king. Lord de Guise himself passes sentences for serious crimes, appropriating fines and confiscations that should have been received by the royal treasury, "however, this lord assigns the right to sort out such cases to his sheriff's court, and all the money goes into his coffers." [2. 96]

A year ago, children began to disappear in the Lord's city. The pattern was that the boys were missing, but there was no evidence. It was the incident with Thomas Wells that brought Richard de Guise to the house. The two investigations connected at one point, in the house of the Lord. But life is not like morality. "Justice is harder to apply to the strong than to the defenseless." [2:96] According to the judge, De Guise is "preoccupied with the glory of his kind." [2. 96]

The comedians wanted to make the Lord an accomplice to their "Game", but they did not even realize that the Lord had long been forced to play a role in another Game, in a Big Game, in which the King and the Judge were also participants.

The secret did not become apparent in this novel. The killer is not shown to the masses. The main thing is that in the end he is punished, so the laws of the genre of morality "work". The finale of the novel remains open, the fate of the amateur investigators is not clear, but according to Niklas at the beginning of the novel, it can be assumed that they were punished. Describing the events that took place, the protagonist of the novel Niklas says: "And whatever it was, I, without a doubt, would not have experienced the horrors that still haunt me at night." [2. 8]

In Moralite, Barry Unsworth shows that in the literature of postmodernism, everything that is taken for reality is in fact nothing more than a representation of it, which also depends on the point of view that the observer chooses, and changing it leads to a radical change in the representation itself.

Conclusion

 The novel "Moralite" presents a mixture and combination of genre features of an adventurous novel, moralite and a detective story. Presenting a Game about Thomas Wells, the actors do not just find the killer — they violate medieval morality, they are obsessed with their production, in a sense, they profit from the murder of a child, which is unnatural in religious genres. Thus, the moral component of the novel turns out to be inverted. The main character Niklas realizes that life is not a morality tale, where everything is part of a carefully thought—out plot.

Modern mass literature is characterized by a tendency not only to a variety of genre modifications within the same genre, but it is often impossible to unambiguously interpret the leading genre. It is no coincidence that P. Casanova notes the emergence of the phenomenon of an "international bestseller" characterized by extreme genre eclecticism: "In an effort to attract the interest of a wide reader, the authors of these novels use all popular means invented in the XIX century for adventure novels and novels with a sequel. In any of them you can find elements of the police, adventurous, love, production, mythological, historical and many other novels" [6. 197].

Speaking about the English novel in the postmodern era, N.A. Solovyova draws attention to the fact that "Britain is characterized by a "historiographical meta-novel" in which the authors try to "(co) contrast the historical and intellectual contexts of the past and present, reconstruct a fictitious reality." ^[10]

Postmodern writers actively write in the detective genre, because the game component of the classic detective story disposes to this. "They deconstructively destroy the "rules of the game" familiar to readers and the narrative scheme of a classic detective story. In their new models of the fictional world, all sorts of formulas are subjected to exclusion and parody." ^[11].

The text of the classic detective story is logical and narrative, the author "repeatedly offers the addressee the possibility of prediction, but each time again and again asserts the pre-emptive right of his own text, unequivocally indicating what exactly should be considered true in his imaginary world" ^[13]. By the end of any detective story, the only true chain of events is built.

The detective line is not the main element of the novel, because the main idea of the author is to show the birth of theater, morality, changing and opening up new opportunities through the game. The main idea in Barry Unsworth's novel "Moralite" lies not in solving the murder, but in staging this event. The author uses the stylization of a "classic detective story" in order to show a different side of the novel, namely, the genre of morality.