Narrative intrigue of “Doctor Zhivago”

The author develops the conception of intrigue proposed by Paul Ricoeur for considering the receptive aspect of narrativity. Narrative intrigue is produced by asynchronism of event and verbal rows of narration (history and discourse). Organizing the reader's reception, narrative intrigue constitutes the disruption in the continuity of the narrated story and connection of its fractal episodes into the unity of the narrating discourse. Thus receptive tension is created that triggers certain readerly expectations and presupposes a certain kind of satisfaction of these expectations. Investigating from the corresponding viewpoint Pasternak's novel, the author states that the leading role in the given novel is played by the enigmatic intrigue of revelation that relegates other more traditional intrigues of cumulative, cyclic or liminal narrative types to the background.