An unnatural reading of the novel “Second body” by Milorad Pavic

In Milorad Pavic’s prose, there is almost no novel in which different concepts of reading theory are not considered or re-examined in some way, starting with the possibility of an encrypted (active) reader of his works, and ending with innovation, which consists in promoting new reading techniques (by definition , from the point of view of an arbitrarily chosen party, reading backwards, reading with tarot cards, fortune-telling, reading according to the intersections of the zodiac signs, etc.). In the studies on Milorad Pavic’s novels, anti-mimeticism has been highlighted several times as a narrative tool in the novelistic work of this writer. However, the definition of anti-mimetism mainly points to the pronounced artificiality of Pavic’s novels (which is also one of the characteristics of postmodern literature) - unconventionalism and violation of ontological boundaries, which are carefully preserved in mimetic novels, while unnatural elements of narrative and unnatural action (with the exception of fantasy and demonic the world of the novel) have not yet been thoroughly examined by researchers. The purpose of our research is to interpret the novel “Second Body” in terms of Pavic’s play with the concepts of narratology (primarily the dead narrator) and to indicate the potential of teaching reading as a coded reading strategy for this novel. The conclusions of the paper indicate the nature and function of this strategic game in the novel “Second Body”, and its importance within the framework of the theory of unnatural reading.