Interaction between the big adventure form and the composition of a neo-romantic literature

Klimenko Irina Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0003-4393-4527 Postgraduate student, Department of Theory of Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119234, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1 klim.irishka4797@rambler.ru

Drawing up a typology of the elements of the composition of neo-romantic works causes certain difficulties due to the wide variety of forms of the latter, however, research in this direction is relevant, since it can detect at the composition level the most frequent signs that allow the reader and research consciousness to define a particular work as neo-romantic, without expanding the term unreasonably.

One of the promising ways to solve the issue in this regard is to turn to the theory of adventure literature, which, in turn, is no less than neo-romanticism, requires clarification of its status in the literary system, and its characteristics are close to neo-romantic poetics. "Adventure" often acts as a characteristic of the work of neo-romantic writers (A. Conan Doyle, G. R. Haggard, R. L. Stevenson, etc.) in general or individual neo-romantic works in particular.

The question arises how the concepts of "neo-romantic literature" and "adventure literature" relate. Despite the breadth and vagueness of both terms, first of all it must be said that they are not synonymous. On the one hand, "adventure" is broader than "neo-romanticism", which still has the status of a direction/ current and relatively clear time limits of existence. The "adventure" has fewer determinants for typologizing it as a literary phenomenon (in particular, it is considered either as a conglomerate of genres ^{[1, p. 294]}, then as a genre ^{[2, p. 26]} or an author's/reader's attitude ^{[2, p. 19]}, etc.), but at the same time more Its functional properties are clearly highlighted in the text, allowing the reader to "recognize" the adventure work. The situation is more complicated with a neo-romantic work: it is more difficult to make a conditional universal list of its differential features. At the same time, if the work is defined as an adventure and appeared at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, then with a high degree of probability it will also be attributed to neo-romanticism. That is, when considering adventure literature in the context of neo-Romanticism, the time factor turns out to be an important characteristic and the commonality of artistic attitudes is revealed. It should be noted that the features of adventure are already found in ancient novels, but it is shaped into a semblance of a genre (najanra) thanks to romantics ^{[3, p. 806]}. From this point of view, genetically adventure literature and neo—romanticism are related phenomena.

Despite the theory of adventure literature as a whole that has not been definitively formed, at the moment, thanks to a number of works in Russian literary criticism, including the book by A. Z. Vulis "In the World of Adventure: the Poetics of the genre", which was quoted above, an idea of the composition of adventure works, about its significant elements, has been developed, while neo-romantic compositional researchers address the specifics much less frequently. This may be due to the fact that the term "neo-romanticism" covers works that have significant differences in poetics, in particular, in the structure of composition.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that, if we talk about adventure literature, its formal features are traditionally considered based on the material of a large prose genre — the novel, but at the same time the concept is applied to small genres, in particular, to the stories of the neo-romantic A. Green, whose work appears as an example in articles about adventure literature in the Dictionary of Literary Terms (1974) and the Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts (2001) without a special genre clause. In this regard, it seems promising to try to apply the theory of adventure composition, developed on novel material, to a neo-romantic story and analyze how the recognizable components of the adventure and the plot schemes inherent in it function in a much more limited text space. This will help to answer the question why the use of the concept of "adventure" is in principle permissible not only in relation to the novel, and to see the features of small adventure prose; on the other hand, it will allow you to correlate the elements of adventure and neo-romantic compositional elements, on the basis of which you can try to isolate the recognizable structure of the neo-romantic story.

In connection with the problem of defining the nature of adventure in fiction, the question arises why it turns out to be a phenomenon closer to the genre (albeit in a broader sense) than, for example, the mode of artistry.

According to V. I. Tyupe, "the mode of artistry is a comprehensive characteristic of the artistic whole. This is one or another system of aesthetic completeness, assuming not only the appropriate type of hero and situation, author's position and reader's perception, but also an internally unified system of values and corresponding poetics" ^{[4, p. 55]}. From this point of view, a literary adventure could come as close as possible to the status of a mode of artistry, since, in general, its properties meet the specified criteria. However, it is no coincidence that A. Z. Vulis suggests considering adventure as a "big genre" ^{[2, p. 28]}, within which, with greater success than with diachronic analysis, one can detect the kinship of such different manifestations as travel novels, science fiction, detective stories, etc. The difference between genre and mode "lies in the fact that modes relate directly to the way of thinking, and genres — to the way of utterance" ^{[5, p. 81]}. Thus, the genre turns out to be a shell for a certain way of perceiving the world. Adventure is directly related to the ability of the subject of thinking to evaluate the dynamics of life precisely as an "adventure", that is, as events that go beyond everyday life. It is noteworthy that this point of view is fixed by S. S. Kozlov when considering the mythologies of neo-Romanticism based on the material of the diaries of the traveler P. Fawcett: "If there were no clear idea of a possible alternative, and the adventure could turn into the former garrison red tape" ^{[6, p. 9]}, as well as D. E. Yakovlev, speaking about the neo-romantic "ability to see" ^{[7, p. 5]}, that is, to perceive reality through the prism of fantasy. This principle indicates that the subject attributes to it the properties and attributes of the adventure, that is, evaluates the existing external form or recreates it based on his knowledge of these attributes. Meanwhile, various ways of thinking — modes can be clothed in the designated form: heroic, dramatic, even ironic, which turns out to be one of the reasons for the wide variety of artistic works united by the concept of "adventure".

In connection with this problem, the question arises, whose perception does this form reflect? V. E. Khalizev, speaking about the modes of artistry, defines them as types of author's emotionality ^{[8, p. 75]}, that is, internal unity arises due to a tangible author's intention, the coincidence of the intentions of the authors of different works united by one mode.

In this case, the adventure genre is rather a "type of reader's emotionality", since the unification of works into one group is not due to the similarity of the intentions of the artists, but due to certain mechanisms of reader perception (thanks to which, for example, the satirical novel by J. Swift "Gulliver's Travels" is included in the list of adventure novels).

It follows from the above that the adventure principle does not lie as deeply at the heart of the structure of the work as the mode, and its implementation in the figurative and compositional system does not coincide with the manifestation of the author's emotionality, but accompanies it at the level of form.

Thus, an adventure is an obligatory interaction of a certain list of formal and substantive features, which at the same time makes it already any epic genre (adventure novel — a subtype of the novel), but also wider than it (adventure novel, adventure story, adventure story). It should be noted that the involvement of the meaningful component of works in the description of the genre is a problem that concerns not only adventure literature. It is associated with the existence of an alternative genre typology, in which the separation occurs based on the difference in the objects of artistic description and the tools used for this purpose: This is how, for example, the genres of romance ("romance"), melodramas, thrillers, etc. begin to function.

In this regard, and returning to neo-romantic poetics, we note that in research there is a coincidence of classifications of neo-romantic works and manifestations of adventure literature.

Thus, N. M. Khachatryan, in his dissertation on French neo-romantic prose, defines the adventure novel as one of the most influential genres of the last third of the XIX century, and calls its genre modifications "generated by new socio-political conditions" ^{[9, pp. 246-247]} exotic, colonial and detective novel. Its classification as a whole includes "not only neo—romantic fantasy, historical and adventure types, but also in each of them there are special subspecies ("frantic" fantastic prose, historical novel-memory, exotic, colonial, detective novels), which shows both the integrity and diversity of the phenomenon under study" ^{[10, p. 39]}.

I. Kachane, describing the categories of English neo–Romanticism, gives a general classification of literary dominants of the turn of the XIX—XX centuries and, in accordance with them, the classification of the most widely read prose: it includes literature of aestheticism, children's, detective and actually neo—romantic prose, based on travel novels and colonial literature ^{[11, p. 116]}.

It is noteworthy that despite the general similarity of the classification principles between N. M. Khachatryan and I. Kachane, there is a significant difference in the ratio of neo-romantic and adventure literature: for I. Kachane, neo-romantic prose itself, in the narrow sense in which the researcher includes it in the general classification, turns out to be part of adventure literature, while N. M. Khachatryan unites all the highlighted types are considered neo-romantic. This once again confirms the above—mentioned problem of categorizing adventure literature and adventure as a literary phenomenon, and in the context of this study, it touches on the problem of clarifying the place of neo-Romanticism in the literary process and indicates the close relationship of these two phenomena at the level of poetics.

As it was noted, to compare their tools and in an attempt to identify recognizable compositional elements of a neo-romantic story, let us turn to the examples of A. Green's short prose.

The adventure primarily captures the predominance of plot over narrative ^{[2, p. 22]}, embodies the hero's living of an exceptional event or chain of events. In the novel, the structuring and linking together of numerous events — the disparate links of the internal system of the adventure — occurs due to the division into chapters. Each chapter can describe a separate full-fledged adventure.

In short stories, works of small volume, the rapidity of events and the increase in tension, which are differential signs of the genre, can be enhanced by compositional construction. In this regard, the division into chapters is not functional from the point of view of genre logic, as it slows down the pace of the narrative. However, in A. Green's short prose, this is a compositional feature. In some works, chapters even receive their own names, as in the short story "The Horseman without a Head (Manuscript of the XVIII century)".

We assume that this is an intentional reference to a large genre, emphasizing the genealogy and connection with the recognizable tradition of the adventure novel, as evidenced, in particular, in relation to Green's "The Headless Horseman ..." by the reference to the novel by Mayne Reed contained in the title. The recognition of tradition by the reader as a whole plays an important role for several reasons: firstly, it is a factor that makes it possible to structure the adventure genre ^{[2, p. 26]}, to include travel novels, detective stories, fantasy literature, etc., different in their properties, and secondly, it is a significant feature of Green's and generally neo-romantic poetics, which is a game with readers' expectations, embodied in allusiveness, comprehension of one's cultural vocabulary "through another's cultural language" ^{[12, pp. 50-51]}. Thus, the use of allusions as one of the compositional techniques and as an immanent and implicit property unites a neo-romantic work and an adventure genre.

The opening game dialogue entails a game at the level of words (stylization, parody), which turns out to be characteristic of both adventure literature, which emphasizes the connection with them by parodying the previous stages of its development, and neo-romantic, inheriting classical romantic irony. The immanent dialogic nature of a neo-romantic work opens up in each case the possibility of deconstructing poetics (including neo-romantic), with which neo-Romanticism interacts, and elevates this process to the rank of reception. The paradoxical result is the connectedness of all the elements of the structure — compositional and stylistic — of a neo-romantic work, the "literariness", the "literary pedigree" of which is exposed with the help of detachment.

A typical example is the story "Taboo" by A. Green, parodying the attributes of a travel novel. In it, both the narrator and the characters comprehend adventure cliches and verbalize them:

"On the eighth day of our voyage, we suffered a classic shipwreck, according to all the rules of this sad business. Schematically, you can express it this way: fog, reef, hole, hail of curses, hoarse voices, boats and our unchanging, lonely drowning captain was no exception."

"The captain, honest like most of them, stood by the chimney with his arms crossed over his chest. The poor fellow's face resembled an agitated sea, he, of course, terribly wanted to live, but the situation obliges — he had to go to the bottom."

In the short story "The Horseman without a Head...", the unity of the parts is created by parodying the attributes of a chivalric novel:

"I was accepted, they gave me a horse, armor, helmet, loincloths, broadsword and boots. <...> My voice became rough, my mustache grew, and I was very proud of my service, thinking that now you can't tell me from Picholtz: he's on a horse — and I'm on a horse; he's in boots — and I'm wearing boots. Driving past Picholz, I idly twirled my mustache."

At the stylistic level, the integrity of the figurative system of the novel is provided by allusions to the story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by V. Irving, in turn, parodying romantic cliches. In both works, this is reflected in the narrators' speech manner, which contrasts with the events described, which eventually leads to travesty.

In a large adventure form, the engine of the plot is a chain of random coincidences ^{[2, p. 55]}, which also performs the function of the installation basis of the composition. Out-of-the-ordinary events are not comprehended by the hero, he is included in them as in a game, that is, he lives an adventure for the sake of the adventure itself, and such works in which the adventurous element has primary importance form the core of the adventure genre genre with all the variety of its manifestations ^{[13, p. 7]}. This clarification is necessary, since individual elements of this "conglomerate of genres" with a lower proportion of pure adventurousness, in particular, the thriller mentioned earlier ^{[13, p. 7]}, can function not as a separate genre, but as a component of the work.

In the center of the neo-romantic story there is one random event, which is due to the small form, and, as a rule, it is interpreted by the hero as not corresponding to the usual course of life. Thus, chance acts as a catalyst for the plot both in accordance with neo-romantic poetics and in accordance with the settings of adventure literature. In a neo-romantic work, she ensures the purity of the experimental verification of the character of the actor. From the point of view of adventure, it is the main driving factor of the plot. The compositional differences are due to the fact that the key importance in an adventure novel is the change of events, and in a neo—romantic story - the disclosure of the character of the hero, torn from the familiar reality, and for this purpose one event is enough.

A functionally common feature is that the reader's point of view, acting as a genre determinant of an adventure work, as mentioned above, in the neo-romantic stories of A. Green corresponds to the "nature of worldview" ^{[14, p. 310]}, the point of view of an internal subject of perception, capable or unable to assess events as romantic, as an "adventure", as a result, this affects the composition of the work, the image system and its assessment.

Thus, if the beginning of the game is the basis of a classic adventure, then the plot of A. Green's neo-romantic stories, as in "A Hundred Versts along the River", can be an adventure game when the characters realize the adventure scheme and even pronounce the rules of the game:

"She imagined that she was not swimming, but reading about a woman with her name in a certain book, which describes forests, hunts, dangers."

Based on all the above, we note that at the level of composition in a large adventure form and in the neo-romantic short prose of A. Green, common features are found. Short stories, influenced by the novel structure, are divided into chapters. When fastening compositional elements, allusions and a point of view become important: if in the context of an adventure they establish genealogical connections and introduce a work into a certain literary series, then in a neo-romantic story they combine elements of composition and open a dialogue with literary traditions. In both cases, dialogicality is emphasized as an artistic principle. Both the adventure novel and the neo-romantic story are built on the game and function as a game: the game principle underlies the adventure, when the hero lives an event for the sake of the event, and influences the composition of the neo-romantic work, based on the game with the reader's expectations. Nevertheless, despite the formal generality of techniques, a neo—romantic story pursues a different goal than an adventure novel - it explores a person in an extreme situation, and not the situation itself, and therefore does not need a large volume.