Issue:

№3 2017

УДК / UDK: 82(091)
DOI:

10.22455/2541-7894-2017-3-127-144

Author: Mikhail Oshukov
About the author:

Mikhail Oshukov (PhD, Associate Professor, Petrozavodsk State University, Russia; the University of Turku, Finland)

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Abstract:

The paper discusses spatial characteristics of two novels by E.E. Cummings in the context of the author’s changing view of the revolution. Persistent spatial patterns and oppositions (e.g., closed vs. open space, circularity vs. linearity of movement) are considered in connection with respective grammar categories of Cummings’ language (e.g., negation vs. affirmation, plural vs. singular). Consequently, the paper argues that the concept of revolution, which in the first novel (The Enormous Room, 1922) was associated with kinesis, overcoming of borders and the affirmation of life, in the second novel (EIMI, 1933) ends up being linked with absolutely opposite spatial, grammatical and value categories, i.e. with stasis, closedness, and ultimately with death.

Keywords: E.E. Cummings, USSR, revolution, travelogue, poetics, chronotope.
References:

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