The thesis is dedicated to the research of the poetical dominants in the novels by A. Volodine "Minor Angels", "Dondog", "Bardo or not Bardo". The phenomenon of "post-exotic" prose is explored for the first time in Ukrainian literary studies. We analyze the novelistic "triptych" as an artistic whole that renovates the novel form in the French postmodernism of late 20th – early 21st century.
A. Volodine`s poetics analysis revealed that the writer`s positioning of his novels as «alien» to the French context is an element of the provocative literary game. He continues the tradition of French literature of the 20th century: he inherited from surrealists the formal experimentation tradition and oneiric discourse elements, from the Nouveau Roman tradition – the emphasizing on problems of «writing», and then reinforced these trends by his socio-political engagement and stylistic hyperbolization. His novels, accentuating auto-reflection, deny the allegation that it is impossible to "tell stories in the twentieth century".
Poetical dominants of the novels by A. Volodine appear as the combination of elements of historical, political, science fiction discourses, aimed to represent the irreal world as the possible one. Within the aesthetic space of postmodernism, A. Volodine develops the reflection on the problem of relations in the triad of human/society/civilization in a fictional form. This original genre form combines various utopian modus elements: anti-utopian one in the denial of the utopian project and showing the individual`s impersonality and social decline in the conditions of utopia ("Minor Angels"), dystopian one – in the negative reality representations similar to the modernist detachment and «black novels» ("Dondog"), counter-utopian one – in the ironic interpretation of the 20th century utopia/dystopia tradition in terms of postmodernist mindset ("Bardo or not Bardo"). Such modifications resulted in the attribution of A. Volodine`s postmodernist novels as meta-utopia that is the architextual form based on the utopian canon, a kind of parody and rethinking of the utopia.
In the prose of A. Volodine, the self-reflection comes to the foreground (interpretation of the problem of writing, creativity, collective memory in the conditions of defeat of utopian ideals). In the "post-exotic" narrative, there is no distinction between the narrative "I" and the imaginary "we". Narrative voices in Volodine`s novels are impersonal, de-centralized, and de-psychologized; in «post-exotic polyphony» they sound «unison» and embody the author's ideological position. The dissembled change and the presence of multilevel narrators allow simulating an anti-utopian reflection. Evening the narrator personal status, accentuating the subject instability, introducing numerical meta-textual elements attest the writer`s meta-fictional strategy. It takes the form of the author`s comments, transgressive narrative constructs (metalepsis and mise en abyme), favoring the elimination of boundaries between the fictional and the real world.
Universals of the "post-exotic" chronotope are the «anti-utopian» loci as last civilization debris: post-apocalyptic city, devastated, endless natural spaces (steppe, taiga). The U-topos is re-interpreted in these novels: traditional prison/camp loci are represented with the nostalgic mood for utopia, and their negative traits are spread throughout the fictional world, stipulating the mortal character and predicting the anti-utopia. The mythic non-life space appears as a rethinking of the utopian motif of the "ideal otherness". In the time-space coordinates of the fictional world numerous are the allusions to real geographic names and historical events; therefore, the unreal chronotope acquires signs of a possible, virtual one, becomes an instrument for opening the fictional form into the reality that is an attribute of post-modernist anti-utopia.
To conclude, the philosophical, socio-political and historical problems in A. Volodine`s novels are actualized in combination of diverse discourse elements, referring to the literary phenomena of different periods and national cultures, as well as auto-reflective mood, transgressive narrative constructs and depersonalized narrative forms, de-aesthetic character of the fictional world, combing signs of fictional and real in the chronotope. The revealed poetical dominants prove that "post-exotic" novels update the literary context and enrich the poetological tools and meanings within form of the postmodernist "meta-utopia".
