Диссертация на соискание ученой степени кандидата филологических наук по специальности 10.01.04 - литература зарубежных стран. - Институт литературы им.Т. Шевченко НАН Украины. - Киев, 2011.

Диссертация посвящена исследованию романного творчества Грэма Грина с точки зрения трагической иронии. На основе философских и эстетических работ А. Шопенгауэра, Ф. Ницше, Г. В.Ф. Гегеля, К. Терлволла, М. де Унамуно, В. Пигулевского и др. выявлена и осмыслена концепция трагической иронии как философско-эстетического феномена, который воплощает модернистскую эпистемологическую парадигму и проявляется в комплексе характерных особенностей жанровой поэтики.

Проанализированы четыре группы романов 1936-1982 гг., которые воплощают различные этапы духовных исканий автора: исследование возможностей христианской доктрины, осмысление духовного кризиса при помощи экзистенциалистского понятия абсурда, изучение перспектив объединения публичного и частного миров при помощи либеральной иронии и попытки реинтеграции антиномий посредством диалога.

Доказано, что трагическая ирония как мировоззренческая и эстетическая концепция играет основоположную роль во всех определяющих романах Грэма Грина, что позволяет рассматривать произведения писателя в системе модернистского типа творчества. Несмотря на присутствие в поздних романах автора постмодернистских художественных стратегий, трагическая ирония Грина сохраняет свою модернистскую природу, так как подчеркивает трагический раскол между внутренним и внешним, индивидом и миром и воплощает мучительные духовные искания человека ХХ в.

Ключевые слова: трагическая ирония, Грэм Грин, роман, модернизм, вера, абсурд.

Summary

Kazanova I.O. Tragic Irony in Graham Greene's Novels. - Manuscript.

Thesis for Candidate of Sciences Degree in Philology: specialty 10.01.04 - Literature of Foreign Countries. - Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. - Kyiv, 2011.

The thesis explores Graham Greene's novels in terms of tragic irony. The conception of tragic irony is formulated on the basis of philosophical and aesthetic works by A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, G. W. F. Hegel, C. Thirlwall, M. de Unamuno, V. Pigulevskiy et al. Tragic irony is examined as a philosophical and aesthetic category of the modernist epistemological paradigm that has a structure_forming function in the text. The philosophical model, which rests on Schopenhauer's vision of man as a victim of irrational forces, Nietzsche's conflict of rational and irrational principles, heroic continuation of life in the boundary condition of devaluation, and Kierkegaard's thesis about personal responsibility for one's choice, has become the foundation of tragic irony as a category of `Weltanschauung'.

In the modernist novel, the strategies that actualize tragic irony function on the level of the image of the protagonist and the specific character of conflict. The former is of a heterogeneous nature, as it combines the features of the tragic hero (heroic pathos, readiness to accept individual and common guilt, motives of loneliness and irretrievable loss) and the ironic character (mediocrity with a limited and often erroneous point of view). The tragic conflict individual vs world, which is the essence of tragic irony, is profoundly interiorized in the modernist text and shapes the mental drama of the protagonist. The dynamics of such conflict envisages progression from the initial harmonious state through tragic error to catastrophe, which emphasizes the paradox of disparity between the intention and the result.

In Graham Greene's novels, tragic irony operates as a means to conceptualize the spiritual crisis of the twentieth century and to explore the ways to overcome it. The variations of tragic irony in Greene's novels correspond to various stages of the writer's search for answers to the key questions of the twentieth century - in the Christian doctrine, perception of the spiritual crisis via the existentialist notion of absurd, exploration of the perspectives of reuniting the public and the private worlds by means of liberal irony and an attempt at reintegration through dialogue.

In particular, the analysis of tragic irony in the cycle of Greene's `Catholic' novels reveals that the author's understanding of Christian faith is consonant with Kierkegaard's tendency for personal interpretation of religious canon, irrational nature of faith and formation of a personal connection with God.

Tragic irony in the political novels written throughout 1955-1973 is expressed via existential absurd. The concept of absurd, which was formulated on the basis of the theory of absurd elaborated by the existentialist philosophy of the 1950s, emphasizes the chaos, irrationality and hostility of the world to the human being, the latter's loss of connection with the transcendental world of values and faith in God, which is nevertheless accompanied by the awareness of the sinfulness of one's actions and guilt.

Graham Greene's `entertainments' contain an invariant form of tragic irony characteristic for this author, which is based on the individual withstanding the society and highlights the opposition of the internal and external world. The significance of `entertainments' is due to the fact that in these novels Greene describes the fundamental split between the private and public spheres of the average person between world wars and during the Cold War. This description is made with the help of the `new vocabulary', in terms of the American philosopher R. Rorty, - the genre elements of the political and spy novels and detective stories. In our opinion, the position of a liberal ironist, formulated by R. Rorty, is close to the variant of overcoming the crisis offered by Greene.

Among Graham Greene's late works, special significance is attached to the novel `Monsignor Quixote' (1982), in which the author re-evaluates the solutions for the spiritual crisis, typical of his earlier works: the Catholic faith, sceptical humanism and the ethics of care in the absurd world, as well as liberal irony, which protects the private realm of the individual.

The undertaken research allows us to consider Graham Greene's works within the modernist literary paradigm. This conclusion is confirmed by the analysis of the epistemology and poetics of tragic irony, which is a characteristic feature of the author's style on various stages of his writing career and in various subgenres of his works, and originates from the modernist works and `Weltanschauung'. However, Greene's novels also include ideas and techniques, which are usually associated with literary postmodernism: the emphasis on the absurdity of existence, its fundamental ambivalence, transition from `or/or' to `and/and' logic, expressed in the coexistence of oppositions, intertextual play, pastiche. Nevertheless, such postmodern elements function in the text as literary techniques of the paradox, - to highlight complex ethical collisions (ambivalence, intertextuality) or to be a source of comic relief (pastiche). Unlike postmodern irony, which treats the truth as relative and tends to sublate all oppositions in the spiritual conflict, Greene's tragic irony retains its modernist nature, as it emphasizes the tragic split between the internal and the external, the individual and the world and embodies the poignant spiritual pursuit of the individual in the twentieth century.

Key words: tragic irony, modernism, Graham Greene, novel, faith, absurd.

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