The Type of “Multiple” Narrator and Its Embodiment in Large Postmodern Genre Forms. Based on the Novel “Olive Kitteridge” by E. Strout

Abstract

The present article concentrates on the concept of “narrative” as a literary category, its characteristics and structural elements. The authors of the article concretize the idea of “narrative”, analyze the main narrative theories, and compare the basic concepts of narratology in the scientific works of outstanding scholars. The “multiple” narrator can be found in the works of original genre with complex compositional and narrative structure. In such narrative structures, the narrator can create his own “reality”, his own author's myth through the view angle of each character. This is typical of modern genre forms, where the plot is built on new genre canons, such as novel forms of the “talk show” format or “SMS” novel. The “multiple” narrator forms the structure, provides plot-compositional unity, “leads” narrative story and influences the genre modification of the literary work. Structural types of “multiple” narrator can perceive the reality subjectively and have the ability to present their own vision of reality and interact with other narrative components such as narrator, recipient, author-demiurge, the signs of which are closely interwoven in the modern text. The narrative component of the novel “Olive Kitteridge” by E. Strout is examined in the article as multi-vector, characterized by free narrative and by a heterodiegetic narrator in an extradiegetic situation.