Chernyshova S. W.S. Maugham's Artistic World (On material of the prose in the first and second decades of XX century)

The artistic world of W.S. Maugham's prose in the first and second decades of the XX century has been reconstructed in the work. Defining a chronotop as a form of its existence it has been found that it is realized as an opposition between the West and the East that turns into organizing center for the main plot events. Great Britain is opposed to the oriental chronotop, realized in three varieties (cross-cultural, idyllic and exotic ones). Main events in the writer's artistic world have been analyzed: the characters transition from the British association into the foreign one, the character's knowing oneself, destruction of the elusions. It has been noted that event base of plots depicts mainly a local conflict and the perspective in which it is elucidated makes it substantial. The experiments with a form are connected with artistic world dramatization and the writer's great attention to the problem of human individuality making. The specificity of the tragic and the ironic as the writer's dominating outlook emotions has been examined.