Grotesque characters as a means of constructing the image of a provincial town in Sherwood Anderson’s prose cycle “Winesburg, Ohio”

The aim of this work is to provide a scholarly understanding of the specific ways in which grotesque characters (“grotesques”) are depicted and their role in the story cycle “Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson, a writer whose name is associated with significant changes in the 20th-century American short story. The article examines key aspects of the cycle’s poetics: the creation of images of the provincial town as the center of the plot space of the work and its characters as a means of characterizing that space. The scientific novelty of the research lies in identifying the meaning-forming potential of grotesque characters in constructing the image of a provincial town and creating a unified artistic space for the cycle, based on the definition and analysis of the features of the linguo-stylistic representation of the characters. The results of the research show that the use of oral storytelling techniques allows the author to switch from plot and entertainment to revealing the inner world of the characters and their moral evaluation. Linguo-stylistic means characteristic of the author’s individual style, used repeatedly to create the images of the characters, such as leitmotif words, artistic details, and charactonyms, reveal the psychology and oddities of the “little man” living in a typical small town. Initially spatial elements, upon repetition in the context of the entire cycle, become symbols of the grotesques’ isolation from the outside world. Through a recurring character, the author reveals the aspirations of the characters, which were not realized in the enclosed space of the provincial town.