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Shanina Yu.A. [Semantics and functions of garden in the English novel at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2023, Vol. 14, No. 4. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/50FLSK423.pdf (in Russian).

Semantics and functions of garden in the English novel at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries

Shanina Yuliya Aleksandrovna
Bashkir State Pedagogical University named after M. Akmulla, Ufa, Russia
E-mail: shanina.julia.a@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3857-0749
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=627432

Abstract. The aim of this article is to determine the peculiarities of the interpretation of garden and its role in the structure of the modern British novel in relation to the previous cultural tradition. The subject of the study were novels: Darkness Visible (1979), Rites of Passage (1980) by W. Golding, The Fifth Child (1988) by D. Lessing, The Cement Garden (1978), Atonement (2001) by I. McEwan, The Pregnant Widow (2010) by M. Amis, which were created at different stages of the postmodern age and dedicated to the problems of the personal spiritual development, the fate of British culture. Their comparative analysis, based on the principles of structural-semiotic and comparative-historical approaches, shows that the garden space has various functions in the structure of this texts. It serves as a means of reflecting the characters’ spiritual state and is also used as a cultural code, which due to its increased semiotics gives a philosophical and social synthesis to what is happening. In all novels the garden acts as part of a structure, which as a rule in relation to its other significant elements acquires the character of a model of reality that goes back to a definite genre forms and worldview. Thanks to this, the authors actualize a wide range of meanings of the image of the garden, including the traditions of ancient and biblical mythology, Renaissance culture, English novel and the ideas of Russoism. The whole complex of cultural codes associated with garden is rethinking in the modern English novel, which reflects a deep crisis of spiritual self-determination of both an individual and society as a whole.

Keywords: M. Amis; English novel; garden space; W. Golding; D. Lessing; I. McEwan; tradition and innovation

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