The thesis presents a comprehensive study of genre specificity, the subject-matter aspect and the poetics of short stories – short fiction by Graham Greene, which comprises fifty-three (full English edition) – fifty-four (full edition of French translations) works. Both scientific and critical reflection and readers’ perception of G. Greene, prove that the author remains one of the greatest, if not the greatest, representatives of the English novel of the 20th century. His novels «Stamboul Train», «Brighton Rock», «The Heart of the Matter», «The Power and the Glory», «The Quiet American», «The End of the Affair», «Our Man in Havana», «The Comedians», «The Honorary Consul», «The Human Factor», «Monsignor Quixote» have gained the world fame, and some of them were translated into Ukrainian.
The research objective is to define the genre affiliation of works that make the corpus of Graham Greene’s short stories, to identify and describe their subject-matter complexity and to carry out a poetological analysis of novellas and stories in order to determine artistic means in their functional, content and aesthetic role.
For the first time, the genre attribution and differentiation of the works that constitute short fiction, have been carried out, selected and described in accordance with the genre-forming features (those that bear the genre) of the type of Greene’s novella and the type of Greene’s story, their relationship with tradition and their inherent specificity, in particular, the realistic principle in depicting characters, time and space relations, attribution to likelihood, which is created by selecting concise, but expressive details and characteristics in describing characters and events, precise psychologization, application of oneiric and fantastic elements, paradoxical statements and situations and a wide range of the comic.
The most typical topics of the short fiction have been identified as the following: the theme of dramatic living conditions, solidarity and sympathy; the epoch-driven theme of the ex-territoriality of a personal identity, which can be called the «Englishman abroad»; the theme of religion and faith; the theme of death as a result of life drama and as a mystical phenomenon; the theme of love and sexual relations; the theme of childhood (childhood disappointments, phobias, aggression, dreams); a man in war; espionage and betrayal, mysterious and abnormal phenomena; the theme of the future.
On the contrary, the dominating motifs include courage in the struggle against hardships of life and ingenuity in overcoming them; keeping a sense of dignity, compassion and empathy for characters who find themselves in difficult or extreme situations; sympathy for heroes who have not lost their need for tender feelings and affection; mockingly satirical or ironic attitude towards callousness, snobbery, immorality and, conversely, a good-naturedly humorous attitude towards the natural manifestations of human nature.
The problematic field of the subject-matter of short fiction covers challenging aspects of the contemporary to the writer epoch: philosophical-existential, moral-ethical, and socio-economic collisions typical of a man of the 20th century; religion, religious beliefs and their influence on human behavior; psychological and pragmatic motives of human behavior; phenomena of life and death; the future of the world order.
The specificity of the space and time of character`s of typology and organization (chronotope) of the narrative of short prose is revealed. Its features include such moments as elaborate description of the place and details of space, in particular exotic loci, in which more than a third of novellas and short stories take place; relief and visualization of characters; the use of time plans as the most important characteristics of the characters, revealing their past and simultaneously matching their lives with the certain historical period of time.
The main forms and means of the comic, used by the writer in almost half of the works of short prose, are identified. It is noted that Greene addresses the means of the comic in his novels more often than in the stories, which confirms the opinion of the majority theorists of the genre that the comic is one of the genre-forming features of a novella. In general, the comic in Greene's prose acquires an important content-semantic and aesthetic function, giving it a philosophical depth and a life-affirming character.
Thus, short stories, or short prose, represented by the genres of novella and story, do not make an ordinary product of Greene's creativity, being just a «sketch» for his novels, but they represent an original and self-valuable part of his short fiction with its subject-matter and stylistic diversity, which proves him to be one of the best, if not the best, storytellers of his time.
