Aesthetic Functions of Clichés in A. Grin's Neoromantic Stories

The subject of the study is the clichés introduced by A. Grin in neoromantic stories as a means of dialogue with romantic and romantic-adventure traditions. The object of the research consists of the works "A Hundred Miles on the River," "Taboo", "A Window in the Forest" and "The Horseman without a Head (Manuscript of the 18th Century)". The author examines such aspects of the topic as the artistic potential of clichéd elements and their functions at the narrative level and the level of internal composition in neoromantic works as the form of allusiveness manifestation. The ways of secondary artistic processing of clichés, based on deconstruction — estrangement and the rejection of automatic reproduction — are revealed. The role of the implicit reader, activated by the introduction of clichéd components, is considered, whose point of view fully participates in the construction of the composition. Relying on structural and dialogical methods, an analysis of the text of the stories is conducted in an attempt to compare the constitutive features of classical allusion and literary clichés and to apply the principles of neoromantic poetics to the analysis of the latter. Based on explicit aesthetic contact with extratextual reality in A. Grin's neoromantic stories, the artistic potential of clichés is revealed: their introduction serves as a means of dialogue with literary traditions and the reading audience. By subjecting clichés to deconstruction through estrangement (elements are recognized by the characters in the stories as clichéd, "bookish"), placing them in a context alien to the referenced tradition, and intensification (building rows), the writer engages the reader in a dialogue-game not to recognize the presence of clichés, as occurs with classical allusion, but to discover their secondary artistic processing. Thus, by actualizing the dialogical beginning, clichés begin to function as a device: complicating the narrative level by drawing on the stylistic features of various literary traditions, as well as serving as a formative element at the composition level, creating a system of internal and external viewpoints: characters, the implicit author and the implicit reader. The research has a certain novelty as it reveals the theoretical principles of incorporating clichés, rarely considered from the perspective of poetic components, as an artistic device, and emphasizes the need to take into account the viewpoint of the implicit reader when analyzing clichéd elements in A. Grin's neoromantic stories, justifying the presence of their artistic processing.