Mikolaychik M. Peculiarities of Psychologism in Doris Lessing's Novels

The thesis is the first comprehensive literary research into the novels of the Nobel Prize winning British author Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013) through the lens of literary psychologism - an original concept designed in the second half of the 20th century by Soviet scholars such as S. Bocharov, V. Fashchenko, L. Ginsburg, A. Jesuitov, N. Kodak, V. Kompaneyets, A. Skaftymov, I. Strakhov, A. Yesin etc. where psychologism is viewed as detailed and thorough literary representation of the characters' inner world, including their thoughts, desires, emotions, feelings etc.Along with male characters fraught with animus features, Lessing's novels often contain some other imagery also charged with archetypal meanings. For instance, the golden notebook, the seal and the four-gated city appearing in the final parts of their respective novels each symbolize the protagonist finally achieving her wholeness and selfhood as a result of her individuation process. Particular attention is invariably paid by the British novelist and her heroines to their dreams, which perform in Lessing's fiction three major functions, namely reflecting their current mental state, guiding them through their individuation process and/or predicting the future.