Pidodvirna M. "The phenomenon of anunreliable narrator in Ukrainian prose of the twentieth century: historical and literary dimension"

The thesis investigates the phenomenon of unreliable narrator in the dynamics of literary forms of the twentieth century. The tendencies of the development of unreliable narration in the Ukrainian literature of the 20-30's of the XX century are characterized. The performed analysis allows to prove the skillful use of unreliable narration technique in the prose of V. Vynnychenko (“On the Other Side”), Mykola Khvylovyi (“I (Romance)”), V. Domontovych (“Doctor Seraphicus”), Mike Jogansen (“Journey of Dr. Leonardo”), Geo Shkurupiy (“Doors in a Day”). The types of unreliable narrator in the postmodern novels by Yu. Andrukhovych (“Recreations”, “Moskowiada”, and “Perversion”) were also analyzed. It was proved that each of the writers bypassed the traditions of classical literature and created completely different prose texts, based on the experiments with the structural principles of literary compositiont, genres and narrative forms. The author argues that in a number of texts (except for “I (Romance)”) we can trace the manifestations of carnivalization and actualized menippeah as a genre tradition in which several plotlines and subjects coexist, and an unreliable narrator is the major component of a higher structural level of composition. Therefore, it is important to single out the primary story, which in this context is closely linked to the act of storytelling in general and the unreliable narrator in particular. The focus is on the stylistics of the text, characterized by increased emotionality and expressiveness. Thus, special attention is paid to the motivation of the provocative behavior of a narrator. Tus, each work outlines the features of an unreliable narration and the resulting effect. It was proved that understanding of the above phenomenon allows to express meanings and to activate the role of the reader in the understanding of modern and postmodern texts. Keywords: unreliable narrator, narrative strategy, menippeah, carnivalization, irony, genre, author's style, reception.