Poetics of Alienation: Female Characters in Carson McCullers\' Prose

Student: Vasyukova Anna

Supervisor: Alexandra Bazhenova-Sorokina

Educational Programme: Philology (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 8

Year of Graduation: 2019

This study focuses on the specifics of characterization of the female characters in the four most popular works of Carson McCullers: “Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, “The Member of the Wedding”, “Ballad of the Sad Café” and “Reflections in a Golden Eye”. Using the methods of narratology, such as the “point of view” according to Henry James and “focalization” according to Gerard Jennet, this work analyzes the influence of the constant change of diverse narrators on the construction of the unique poetics of alienation. Turning to the history of the concept of “alienation” in sociology and literary studies, to the figure of freak in the works of South Gothic, as well as to the classic cultural archetypes of female characters, the study attempts to understand how McCullers uses and/or deconstructs these concepts to manifest the alienation of heroines from their own bodies and from society

Full text (added June 7, 2019)

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