The Features of Philological Prose in the Novels of A. Bitov and J. Barnes: On the Problem of Paratextuality

The article explores intertextual inclusions in philological prose through the examples of works by modern writers: Pushkin House (1971) by A. Bitov (USSR) and The Noise of Time (2016) by J. Barnes (England). One of the research objectives is to analyze the legitimacy of considering the novel The Noise of Time as that possessing the features of a philological novel. Since this work is considered in the country of origin as a fictional biography, the article examines the accepted markers of a philological novel and their presence in the novel by J. Barnes. The comparison of the two works reveals a common cultural code since the heroes of the novels are both affected by the time of the Great Terror. A. Bitov's novel is an artistic text that creates a literary portrait of the epoch employing the means of a philological novel. J. Barnes creates secondary text using already published biographies of Dmitri Shostakovich, but creatively rethinks biographical materials. A comparative analysis showed that one of the special features of the novels is their structure, characterized by the presence of several types of interaction between texts, including intertextuality and paratextuality. The novels contain quotes and allusions to classical Russian works of Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy. The relationship between the texts and their titles, chapters, and epigraphs helps to create subtext, characteristic of a philological novel, the understanding of which requires at least minimal philological knowledge. A philological novel and a fictional biography novel synthesize memoir, biographical, essayistic, and artistic discourses. For the writer, the facts of biography and fiction become equivalent means of creating a literary image. As material the writer can use diaries or essays written by a historical figure, prototypes of the heroes. The personality of the hero, proposed for the reader as a riddle to solve, allows one to see the hidden meaning of the text, to join the intellectual game.