New York in L. S. Shcwartz’s "The Writing on the Wall", J. S. Foer’s "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" and D. Delillo’s "Cosmopolis"

The study of the image of the city in literature plays an important role in presenting a solid literary world. Currently, the metropolis as a literary locus is most often found in modern texts. Due to the fact that the September 11th tragedy in New York resonates with many people, the problem of its reflection through the image of the city has become a new significant topic in American literature, which determines the relevance of this study. The novels by Don DeLillo and Jonathan Safran Foer have been previously studied in the context of the 9/11 tragedy, however, in modern Russian literary studies, the image of the city in the novels mentioned in this work has not been analyzed in comparison with each other. The image of New York in American literature is constantly changing, as large cities in the modern world are developing at an incredibly fast pace. In this regard, when considering the image of New York, it is necessary to rely on fundamental theoretical knowledge about space in literature. This study examines the New York locus from the point of view of M.M. Bakhtin's "chronotope", as well as identifies the key signs, symbols and characteristics inherent to the city portrayal in the novels by D. DeLillo, J.S. Foer and L. Sh. Schwartz. Such researchers as Yu. M. Lotman and V.N Toporov have examines these aspects of the image of urban space in their works. This work identifies and analyzes the most significant features of the image of New York in the novels written by Lynn Sharon Schwartz "The Writing on the Wall", Jonathan Safran Foyer "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and Don DeLillo "Cosmopolis", and also compares them with each other. As a result of the comparative analysis, it was revealed that literary texts written after the September 11th have similar characteristics in the construction of the image of New York, regardless of whether the tragedy is depicted in the novel or not, since this event had a significant impact on the perception of the city by Americans.