CINEMATOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF SELMA LAGERLOF’S PROSE POETICS

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the range of visual and cinematic devices in the poetics of Selma Lagerlöf’s prose and to determine their role in shaping the distinctive character of her artistic worldview. To achieve this aim, the methods of formal and intermedial analysis were employed. The study of the writer’s short stories, the novellas Herr Arne’s Hoard and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, the novel The Saga of Gösta Berling, and the novel trilogy The Ring of the Löwenskölds revealed a wide range of visual devices in Lagerlöf’s prose poetics that correlate with the devices of cinematic poetics. These include the dynamism of details, the creation of a double-exposure effect in prose, and an emphasis on the pictorial representation of the world characterized by an accentuated play of shots and perspectives. On the narrative and plot levels, the cinematic quality of the writer’s prose is manifested in her frequent use of chase scenes, races, and horseback riding episodes to intensify the plot, as well as in the creation of a suspense effect through cinematographic elements. This makes it possible to conclude that the visual component is one of the central features of the poetics of Lagerlöf’s prose, placing it within the context of “post-Flaubertian” literature that emerged in the final third of the nineteenth century and was characterized less by narrative orientation than by pictorial representation. At the same time, the artistic worldview in all of Lagerlöf’s major works is marked by a high degree of dynamism at all levels (imagery, plot, and narration), which gives her prose a distinctly cinematic coloring and situates it within the intermedial context of twentiethcentury literature.