About the dynamism of author's world image (a case study of B. Schlink's novels)

Concept “Past” is considered to be one of the basic concepts for individual world-image of a modern German writer Bernhard Schlink. While analyzing how a number of characteristics of the following cultural concept have been changing in two novels, written by Bernhard Schlink in recent years, “The Weekend” (2008) and “The Woman on the Stairs” (2014), the author of the paper draws a conclusion about the evolution of author’s world-image in these novels. In the novel “The Weekend” the core of the concept “Past” takes an abstract form and readers could associate it with “a destiny of a person as a representative of his/her generation”. In the second novel “The Woman on the Stairs” the following characteristics, though, is concretized and has a meaning of “a concrete person’s life, personal destiny”. Therefore, the dynamism of author’s world-image is manifested in the change of its core characteristics from the abstract to specific form.