INTERTEXTUALITY AS A FACTOR OF THE GENRE SPECIFICITY OF MICHEL TOURNIE’S NOVELS

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to study forms and functions of intertextuality in Michel Tournier’s novels and to determinethe connection of this aspect of the author’s poetics with the genre specificity of his works and the influence of a certain typeof intertextuality on the formation of genre strategies.

Methods. The following research methods are used in the study: genre approach, intertextual analysis, myth criticism, comparativetypologicalanalysis.

Results. A review of modern research of the works of Michel Tournier by foreign and domestic scholars is done, and the lackof studies of the author’s intertextual strategies is revealed. The ideological and philosophical character of the writer’s orientation todifferent sources of intertextual borrowings is emphasized. Forms and types of intertextuality in Tournier’s novels are classified byorigin (literary, legendary apocryphal) and by the mode of the author’s attitude to the precedent texts (according to Ya. Polishchuk:mythologization, remythologization, demythologization). The main functions of the intertextuality in the writer’s novels are determined:accumulative-mnemonic (condensation of cultural memory) and generative (embodiment of the author’s fictional concept of the worldand man, formation of the genre strategy of the works). The genre features of Tournier’s novels on the basis of the dominant typeof intertextuality are revealed. In the novel «Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique», due to the deconstruction (demythologization)of the Enlightenment myth about the predominance of culture over nature, the leading tendency is creation such a specific genrephenomenon as the anti-myth novel. The novel “Gaspard, Melchior Et Balthazar” is characterized by a type of remythologization basedon a free but undistorted interpretation of the gospel story of the worship of the Magi. It causes the genre specification of the work as a novel-apocrypha. In the novel “Le Roi des Aulnes”, Tournier uses a number of precedent texts to create a novel-myth aboutthe phenomenon of fascism-“cannibalism” and the idea of phoria (carrying) as a mission to save child in the apocalyptic world.

Conclusions. Michel Tournier’s novels are thoroughly intertextual. The author turns to precedent texts of different originsand sources, using them in accordance with his own worldview and philosophical beliefs, creative ideas and genre strategies. Dependingon the priority type of intertextuality, specific genre dominants have been identified in the writer’s works. They fit into the generaltendency to mythologization (novel-myth, novel-antimyth, novel-apocrypha) and intellectualization of the genre of novel. This trend isdeterminative both for the work of Michel Tournier and for all the world literature of the XX and XXI centuries.