Development of the Joyce’s principle of collage-editing technique in M. Shishkin’s novel “Maidenhair”

About the authors:

Alexander V. Markov, Dr. Sci. (Phylol.), Professor, Department of Cinema and Contemporary Art, Russian State University of the Humanities (Moscow); Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Philology, Vladimir State University named after A. G. Stoletov and N. G. Stoletov; markovius@gmail.com; ORCID: 0000-0001-6874-1073

Julia N. Myslina, Postgraduate Student, Department of Russian and Foreign Philology, Vladimir State University named after A. G. Stoletov and N. G. Stoletov; yulia_mislina@mail.ru; ORCID: 0000-0002-5561-1859

Abstract:

The article examines the development of Joyce’s collage-editing technique of the collection “Dubliners” in M. Shishkin’s novel “Maidenhair”. The aim of the work is to investigate the rules of the transition of Joyce’s surrealist collage into Shishkin’s collage-editing principle, where a new type of collage, as an intellectual concernment, made it possible to comprehend editing, avant-garde and the destinies of culture in a situation of intercultural communication. The subject of this research is the specificity of Shishkin’s collage-editing technique in its dynamic development. The study required not only a comparatively-comparable method, but also a constant consideration of the general context of the evolution of the terms “collage” and “editing” in the 20^th-21^st centuries. And the approval of their standard literary significance. The analysis made it possible to reveal Joyce’s technique, that was close to surrealistic collage, in describing the general paralysis of Dublin at the beginning of the 20^th century, is reinterpreted by Shishkin into a postmodern collage, where Russian reality was presented as initially non-integral, which had been in a state of paralyzed consciousness for a long time. And only love, according to both authors, serves to overcome such disunity. It turns out that true love on earth is unattainable, therefore, to form a general impression of its loss, Joyce turns to the editing technique that allows various love stories to collide each other, increasing the effect of alienation at the boundaries of their touch. Shishkin, rethinking Joyce’s type of editing into a postmodern editing principle, declares the hope of finding eternal love on earth, equal to vital energy. In the collection “Dubliners” and the novel “Maidenhair”, the theme of death represents a combination of collage and editing techniques at the same time. Where Joyce’s longing for a departed ideal is supplemented by the significance of the birth of something new (organization, idea etc.), but in Joyce’s world, death completes the life cycle of a person; and in Shishkin’s work, the boundaries between life and death have already been fundamentally erased, which allows the heroes, more precisely the stories as their embodiments after their death, to continue their existence.

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