THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS AND FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF A CHAOS-THEORY ANALYSIS OF FICTION

Abstract

The article deals with the theoretical assumptions and fundamental principles of a chaos-theory analysis of fiction. The material for the research are James Joyce’s collection «Dubliners» and «Finnegans Wake». The research demonstrates the projection of the theory of chaos (chaology or chaotics) onto the field of literary criticism and interpretation of bellesletters texts. The theoretical foundation of the research is provided by the ideas of Ph. Kuberski, D. Porush, H. Hawkins, T. J. Rice, N. K. Hayles, U. Eco, and P. Stoycheff. The article emphasizes the fact that the theory of chaos allows to provide the analysis of the literary texts where chaos and order, predictability and unpredictability, stability and instability, «the flickering of meaning» and plurality of critical interpretations acquire the status of a thematic and conceptual dominant. Besides, the theory of chaos opens up an opportunity to overcome the spatial-temporal dichotomy of a piece of fiction and thus to reveal its heuristic potential. In addition, the analysis of fiction (specifically, James Joyce’s prose) through the prism on the theory of chaos makes it possible to change the traditional analytical approaches and highlight the hitherto undiscovered characteristics of Joycean oeuvre. The short stories included in James Joyce’s «Dubliners» can be analyzed as the samples of a non-linear dynamical system with due regard to such phenomena as bifurcation, an attractor and a fractal geometry. James Joyce’s «Finnegans Wake» generates such constitutive characteristics of a non-linear dynamic system as irreversibility, auto-reflexivity, non-linearity and self-organization. In the framework of the theory of synergy the main factors of self –organization is the opposing vectors of repellers, on the one hand, and atttractors, on the other. The repellers tend to mould a stable shape of a literary discourse, whereas the attractors contribute to its flexibility and dynamics (L. S. Pichtovnikova). It is possible to assume that syntax in Joyce’s «Finnegans Wake» performs the function of a repeller, while the transgressions on a lexical level of this novel serve as attractors. We can describe the evolution of Joyce’s manner of writing in terms of the sensitive dependence on initial conditions (the butterfly effect): from a predominantly conventional type of narrative in «Dubliners» to a «verbivocovisual» (Joyce) text oscillating between order and chaos with the amplified disturbances at each level of «Finnegans Wake».