JOHN FOWLES’ NOVEL “THE COLLECTOR” IN THE PARADIGM OF “DOUBLE CODING”

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to trace the creative dialogue between elite and mass literature in J. Fowles’ novel “The Collector” asa factor in creating genre modifications in the game field of postmodern literature.

Methods. The complex methodology is used in the article. Structural-semantic, intertextual methods, mythopoetic approach,methods of close reading are used for the interpretation and analysis of works of art and essays by J. Fowles.

Results. The article examines the strategies of the relationship between the mass and elite in J. Fowles’ novel “The Collector”(1963), which gained special development in the literature of the 20th century and was called “double coding”. Some aspects of J. Fowles’creative self-identification are traced. The categories “double coding”, “genre polyphony”, and the socio-cultural concept of “success”are considered. It is revealed that the principle of “double coding” is genre-modeling at all levels of the structure of the work, itsproductivity in the plot-compositional organization of the novel, artistic embodiment of the external and internal themes is clarified.The interrelation of problems, plot and linguistic-stylistic components of the work is considered. It is proved that the author unfoldsthe model of human relations in an internal topic. In a complex set of problems, the author emphasizes the confrontation between “TheFew and the Masses” (J. Fowles), which is manifested in a conflict between the “man of the masses” – Frederick Clegg and the intellectualand spiritual personality of the artist Miranda Gray. The confrontation takes place on a value-mental level, in a situation where twopeople choose between light and darkness, reason and intellectual limitations, beauty and utilitarianism, freedom and imprisonment,ugly pleasure from power and the injustice of the victim, nobility and meanness. The correlation between traditional genres of highliterature and modern mass in the creation of new novel modifications is revealed.

Conclusions. In J. Fowles’ postmodernist novel “The Collector”, the principle of “double coding” is one of those that modelsthe genre, participates in text creation, and corresponds to the author’s communicative and receptive strategies. The study of the work in the paradigm of “double coding” proves that such a synthesis contributes to the intellectualization of mass literature, which loses its onedimensionality,and adds readability to experimental literature by returning it to the plot, intrigue, methods of interest of the recipient.The author combines the objectivity of a traditional novel with the subjectivity of a new 20th century novel.