Analysis and Anecdote: Two Models of the Child's Voice in Russian and Uzbek Prose
Keywords:
hild image; narrative voice; first-person narration; skaz; hangoma; psychological prose; Tolstoy; Aksakov; G'afur G'ulom; comparative literatureAbstract
Most classical narratives of childhood are told in the first person by an adult who remembers being a child. The relation between the remembering voice and the remembered child is therefore a key to the child image. This paper compares two Tolstoy's Childhood and Sergei Aksakov's Childhood Years of Bagrov's Grandson, is called here the memory-analysis model: the adult narrator analyses the child's feelings and perceptions, and the narrative voice is reflective and self-observing. The second, represented by G'afur G'ulom's The Mischievous Boy, is called the anecdote (Uzbek hangoma) model: the narrator tells his childhood as a chain of humorous oral stories addressed to listeners, and the child appears through deeds and speech rather than through analysed feelings.
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References
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