This study treats in detail one of the significant themes of world literature in the narratives of the Russian writer L. N. Tolstoy. The theme of death, its modalities, motifs and related aspects, occur frequently in all of Tolstoy's artistic and philosophical writings. He presents this theme in connection with other dominant themes such as appearance and reality, falsity and truth, the attempts and failures to materialize individuals' objectives, all in various contexts of life--both private and public, and especially military life. The selection of themes such as sexuality, violence, or the transgression of moral laws, also affects the presentation of the theme of death. Instead of focusing on one pair of dominant semantic fields, Tolstoy (in the majority of his narratives) connects several of them equally. There are very few of his works in which one semantic field dominates. In accordance with Realist poetics, Tolstoy presents the theme of death directly; references to death on an allegorical or symbolic level occur in only a few of his narratives. In his early works, Tolstoy varies not only the fundamental modalities, but also the basic modes of violent and natural death. The presentation of a theme in a narrative differs depending on the length of the narrative. In his shorter prose fiction, Tolstoy concentrates the theme of death into specific passages, while its presentation in the longer narratives is distributed throughout the texts. In presenting the various characters, his narrators reveal their philosophies of life, which are particularly apparent in the borderline situation of death and dying. Members of different social classes display, as a rule, contrasting philosophies in revealing their attitudes and reactions--a trend which is again noticeable both in Tolstoy's major prose and in his late narratives. The author's focus on introspection (although in his early prose members of the lower classes are excluded from this technique) continues to play an important role in his late work as well. The author uses typical narrative devices such as anticipation, retrospection, association and paradox in the depiction of this complex theme as he attempts to 'de-romanticize', 'de-sensationalize' and 'de-dramatize' this topic. Despite the general tendency to omit the actual moment of death, there are a few works in which the horror of violent death shocks the reader. As for artistic development in presenting this theme, Tolstoy continues to employ a basic stock of devices and techniques already manifest in his early works.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/9731 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Metzele, Josef. |
| Contributors | Donskov, Andrew, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 250 p. |
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