The archetypal space of the palace in E. Zola’s novel «The Ladiesʼ Paradise»
Abstract
The article reveals the connection between the artistic space of the naturalistic novel with the archetypical forms of mentality and culture. The author used the structural-semiotic method of text analysis, as well as the analysis of archetypical images that are regularly repeated in the European cultural experience. The concept of “archetype” in literary analysis is proved to be necessary. Among other things, using of this concept makes it possible to free the study of the text from the need to take into account polemic statements and aesthetic manifests of the authors. Besides, this approach gives an opportunity to analyze the text as such and to distinguish between historical reminiscences and allusions and archetypical models, as well as between current influences and generally valid archetypes. Special attention is given to the image of the Palace and to its spatial model, which works in the novel as a specific meaning-generating mechanism. The image of the Palace is viewed through its historical importance for the second half of the XIX century. It is as well regarded in its archetypical function, which organizes the artistic structure of the novel. Besides, the archetypical function of the image of the Palace makes it possible to bring the text to a new unrealistic level of generalization for the XIX century. This approach is very important to a historian of literature, because it allows to explain some aspects of the aesthetical commonality in the naturalist style and in the modernist style, while these two literary trends are traditionally opposed