Phototextuality as a poetological category of the English novel: stating the problem

The article deals with phototextuality as a poetological category of the modern English novel. An attempt is made to define the term ‘phototextuality'. A brief historiography of the issue is presented. The focus is basically on photographic ecphrasis, which we define as a description of a photograph being the subject of the character's reflection or a result of cooperation of the photographer and the model. The article introduces two differentiating terms: protophotonekphrasis, which has a real photoprototype in the culture, and a notional photoekphrasis, created exclusively by the author's imagination. Each of these photoekphrases is an active structure-forming component of both the issues raised and the poetics of the analyzed novels: Master Georgie (1998) by B. Bainbridge, The Photograph (2003) by P. Lively, The Rain Before It Falls (2007) by J. Coe, The Unseen (2011) by K. Webb. We investigate the functionality of photoekphrasis as a structural-semantic unit of literary text at the following levels: plot and composition, narrative, chronotope, system of images-characters. Photoekphrasis, organically fitting into the postmodern themes and subject matter of the novels, brings to the fore the concepts of memory, identity, fact and fiction, death and others as motives-themes and motives-problems. Basing on the analysis performed, we propose a classification of novels depending on the type of photographs presented in them - staged or random (natural): 1) a novel-photoreconstruction and 2) a novel-photoreflection. Photographic ekphrasis as a type of phototextuality can be considered one of the basic narrative strategies in literary practice of the late 20th - early 21st centuries.