The asymmetry of memory and memories in fiction: narratological aspect

Abstract

The relevance of the article lies in the theoretical generalization of philosophical, aesthetic, and narratological approaches to the explication of the phenomenon of a narrator’s and a character’s individual memory, namely the interaction of memorization, forgetting, and memories as necessary components of an entire cognitive process. The subject of the research is the asymmetry of memory and memories in the homodiegetic narrative. The methodology of analysis is based on the works of A. Assman, Aristotle, M. Bal, Ya. Bystrov, A. Erll, B. Neumann, A. Nünning, W. Randall, and other scholars, postclassical narratologists. Three main approaches to the concept of memory in modern narratology are considered: 1) “memory of literature”; 2) “mimesis of memory”; 3) literature as a mediator of collective memory. The main focus of the article is on the “mimesis of memory”. The purpose of the research is to represent Ruth Ware’s “In a Dark Dark Wood” and Paula Hawkins’s “Into the Water” novels as a narrative explication of the cognitive phenomenon of memory. An analysis of the novels selected as the object of the study suggests that any first-person narrator is unreliable, especially a traumatized one who builds a story on his or her own memories. This is due to the narrator’s subjective assessment of the events described, where there is a significant time distance between the events and the moment of their fixation, and the narrator’s attempt to transform memories, namely to modify events and believe in this new version. Narrative staging of memorization and forgetting is achieved through the subjectivity of the story of homodiegetic narrators, the presence of two or more time planes, different versions of events, analepsis techniques, etc. The discordance of the memories shown by the narrators with real events is the characteristic of the mechanisms of memory and the factor that significantly affects the development of the plot in the novels. The novelty of the study is the application of a cognitive approach to the analysis of homodiegetic mnemonic narrative. The results of the research have perspectives for further analysis of individual works, which are an artistic presentation of the interaction of memory and memories.