For the first time in Ukrainian literary studies, the thesis introduces how the category of indeterminacy functions in contemporary literature. The research paper involves the works of representative modern and postmodern artistic systems and reveals the peculiarities of forms and functions of artistic indeterminacy.
Since the late 19th century, world literature has undergone radical changes, caused by worldview shifts as well as artists’ realization of the necessity of transition to the new conception of the world and the human being in the dimensions of unstable and multiple manifestations of genesis and existence.
The correlation of the central diachronic phenomena of contemporary literature – modernism and postmodernism – has not been evaluated exactly in present-day literary studies. The research on the cases of indeterminacy in different works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries proves that the fundamental principles and features of modernist poetics have been imitated and developed within postmodernism. Several typologically similar poetic and stylistic elements traditionally connected to one artistic system have been revealed.
It has been proved that the main typologically similar poetic-stylistic elements of indeterminacy are non-linearity and fragmentation of the plot with the numerous dispersed spaces and lacunas, polyphony of the narrative, and play with points of view, an entrusted story emphasizing the narrator’s unreliability, cross-cutting symbolic imagery.
The received research results and the generalized conclusions widen the theoretical scope for further scholarly works on the problems of modern and postmodern poetics, in particular, taking into account the forms and means of expressing the author’s position.
The research data consists of the fiction texts acknowledged by the scientific-critical thought as landmarks for a certain stage of historical and literary development and important in artistic-aesthetic terms. The texts have been analyzed within the following theoretical and methodological conceptions: narratology, receptive aesthetics, theory of intertextuality, and structural-functional analysis.
The structure of the thesis is made of abstracts in Ukrainian and English, a list of the published author’s works, an introduction, four chapters with subdivisions and interim conclusions, conclusions, references and supplements.
In the introduction, the relevance of the thesis topic has been substantiated; its aim and tasks have been formulated; the subject, object, theoretical, and methodological basis of the investigation have been specified; the database has been highlighted; the scientific novelty of the research, its practical and theoretical value have been characterized; the list of the published papers and information on the approbation of the research results have been arranged; the thesis structure and volume have been outlined.
Chapter one – “Theoretical and methodological aspects of the investigation of the category of indeterminacy” – is devoted to the overview of the theoretical grounds and methodological strategies of the poetics of indeterminacy. It is stressed that the study of the phenomenon of indeterminacy demands a complex approach applying various literary methods and certain theoretic literary conceptions: narratology, receptive aesthetics, theory of the reader’s response, theoretic-methodological works of R. Barthes and U. Eco.
Chapter two – “Paradigm of forms of artistic indeterminacy in modernist literature” – contains two subdivisions. The first one depicts the artistic experience of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Andre Gide as representatives of “pre-modernism”. Its distinctive features are objectification of the author’s position, rejection of the author’s absolute power, event representation in different formats of focalization with modeling “spaces” and “emptiness” that have to be filled by the reader.
The typological features of the novels “Ulysses” by J. Joyce and “The Night Forest” by J. Barnes are the fragmentation of the plot, loose time and space action organization based on the conception of “time-continuity”, associative imagery, generating variational techniques of “flow of consciousness”. “Binding” of a discrete-fragmentary text as a fundamental element of poetics of indeterminacy happens due to repeated motives, сhronotopical parallels, and arbitrary-symbolic imagery.
Some variants of poetics of indeterminacy can be observed in the works representing American modernism. F.S. Fitzgerald in the novel “The Great Gatsby” refuses the traditional structure of a character’s image, leaving “indefinite places” in his biography and disposition. In the novel, the narrator is more the observer than the event participant and directs the reader in their receptive quest.
In conclusion the main statements and results of the dissertation have been summed up and generalized.
