Pripovjedni postupci u djelima Tomasa Pinčona

Abstract

Doktorska disertacija pod naslovom Pripovjedni postupci u djelima Tomasa Pinčona analizira cjelokupan korpus proznih djela ovog pisca nastalih od kraja pedesetih pa do 2013. godine: narativnu strukturu Pinčonovih osam romana i jedne zbirke pripovijedaka, i za osnovnu metodologiju uzima obrasce iz klasične naratologije: poetiku tačke gledišta Borisa Uspenskog, Ženetove vremenske aspekte pripovijedanja, retoriku Vejna Buta, poglede Dorit Kon na svijest, uz enciklopedistički pristup najznačajnijem djelu, Dugi gravitacije. Samoj analizi prethodi uvod u najvažnije teorijske postavke naratologije iz perioda od ruskog formalizma pa do osamdesetih godina XX vijeka, u kome se vidi da se neke ideje stavljaju u sličnu žižu decenijama kasnije i da je teško potpuno eliminisati uticaje jedne škole u narednoj eposi, te se međusobno nadovezuju u postulatima. Tačka gledišta se javlja na nekoliko planova: ideološkom, frazeološkom, prostorno-vremenskom i psihološkom, kao i na kombinovanom – stavovi lika i naratora nekada se ne podudaraju i tekst pruža veće bogatstvo u procesu čitanja. U poglavlje su uključene desetine primjera iz Pinčonove zbirke pripovjedaka, radi ujednačenije analize tekstova iz približno istog vremena. Analiza po Ženetu usredsređuje se na kategoriju vremena u tri Pinčonova romana, koja kod francuskog teoretičara ima tri podvrste: poredak, trajanje i učestalost. U ovom poglavlju opširno se raspravlja o anahronijama (analepsama i prolepsama), ahronijama, sažecima, scenama, pauzama i elipsama, a i o trajanju i ritmu događaja u nizu. Butov implicitni autor se nalazi ispod nivoa empirijskog autora, a iznad pripovjedača, naratera i likova u tekstu. To je ona instanca koja svojim nevidljivim djelovanjem omogućava pripovjedaču da se ponaša jedinstveno za svako djelo, da bude informisaniji ili neobavješteniji, da daje širi ili uži dijapazon opšteg, ironičnog, familijarnog ili ciničnog komentara, da stoji na bližem ili daljem odstojanju; za analitički korpus su poslužila četiri romana. Sljedeće poglavlje zasniva se na teoriji Dorit Kon o tri nivoa prikaza svijesti po dubini ulaska u um likova: psihonaraciji, pripovijedanom monologu i navedenom monologu. Za korpus su uzeti najstariji i najnoviji roman, i primjećuje se više psihonaracije nego druge dvije tehnike, ali u drugom romanu se po zastupljenosti s njom pripovijedani monolog skoro izjednačuje. Posljednje poglavlje analize raspravlja o enciklopedijskim osobinama Pinčonovog najznačajnijeg djela, i fokus proučavanja se donekle mijenja, jer prelazi sa mikroanalize na izučavanje temeljnih prinicipa ovog složenog romana: u najkraćem, paradoksalnih suprotnosti u haosu Drugog svetskog rata, izatkanih oko priče o detektivskom zadatku u okupiranoj Njemačkoj.

The Ph.D. thesis entitled Narrative Techniques in the Works of Thomas Pynchon analyses this author’s entire fictional corpus, published between the late 1950s and 2013: the narrative structure of his eight novels and one collection of short stories, taking the following patterns from classical narratology as its pivotal methodology: Boris Uspensky’s poetics of the point of view, Genette’s temporal aspects of narrative, Wayne Booth’s rhetoric, Dorrit Cohn’s views of consciousness, alongside an encyclopaedistic approach to his magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow. The analysis proper is preceded by an introduction to the major theoretical theses from the period between Russian Formalism and the 1980s, where it is evident that certain ideas re-emerge in focus decades later and that it is difficult to eliminate completely the influences of one school in the ensuing age, as they complement one another’s postulates. The point of view occurs at several levels: the ideological, phraseological, spatiotemporal and psychological, as well as at the combined level – the views of the character and narrator sometimes diverge and the text offers a more pregnant reading. The chapter includes dozens of examples from Pynchon’s short story collection, for a more balanced analysis of texts from approximately the same time. Genettean analysis focuses on the category of time in three novels by Pynchon to demonstrate examples of the French theorist’s three subtypes: order, duration and frequency. This chapter extensively discusses anachronies (analepses and prolepses), achronies, achronies, summaries, scenes, pauses and ellipses, as well as duration and the rhythm of events in succession. Booth’s implied author exists below the empirical author’s level, and above the narrator, narratee and characters in the text. That is the entity which acts imperceptibly, allowing the narrator to behave uniquely to every new work, to be better or worse informed, to give off a broader or narrower spectrum of general, ironic, familiar or cynical commentary, to assume a closer or farther distance; the analytical corpus consists of four novels. The next chapter is founded on Dorrit Cohn’s theory of three levels of representing consciousness according to the depth of penetration into the characters’ mind: psychonarration, narrated monologue and quoted monologue. The corpus consists of the first and the latest novels, and one can notice more psychonarration than the other two techniques, but in terms of frequency, narrated monologue almost comes on a par with it in the latter novel. The last chapter of analysis discusses the encyclopeadic features of Pynchon’s most relevant work, and the focus of attention somewhat changes, as it shifts from microanalysis to the study of the fundamental principles of this complex novel: in brief, the paradoxical opposites in the chaos of World War Two, twisted around the detective mission narrative in occupied Germany.