Non-anthropological narrators in English prose

The above mentioned narrators - animalistic and vampire are central characters. These personages are the main heroes and take active part in the events they narrate.

Narrator in Julian Barnes's novel "A History of the World in 10 V Chapters" is a woodworm, who cannot see anything, but he, being the descendant of many generations of woodworms, inhabited in St. Michael church, describes the events, heard from birds. Such unusual narrator even not only has a capability to argue and philosophize, but also considers himself to be even equal to a man:

I know your species tends to look down on our world... But among us there had always been, from the beginning, a sense of equality Barnes, Julian (1990), A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters : [novel], New York: Vintage, 307 p..

The introduction of inanimate narrator, according to E.V. Igina, is an extreme case of explicit escape of the author Игина Е.В. (2002), О понятиях "образ автора" и "точка зрения" в теории и практике анализа литературно-художественного произведения, Записки з романо-германскої філології, Одеса, Вип. 11, С.85- 95. Fischer T. (1997). The Collector Collector : [novel]. London : Vintage, 215 p..

The story can be told by an inanimate object (artifact) - a vase, a bottle. An example of such narrator can be an old vase in Tibor Fischer's story "The Collector Collector" or a wine bottle in Joanne Harris's story "Blackberry Wine".

In the above mentioned stories all the events are shown through object's perception.

The main personage (the storyteller) in Tibor Fischer's story "The Collector Collector" is an old ceramic vase dated 843 B.C. She is more than 2000 years old. According to the story the vase is alive, knows more than 5000 languages, changed many owners, can change form and size. She thinks that it is she, who collects, not people. She classifies its masters and the people

caught in her sight, and gives them number: The Chin (Forty Thousand One Hundred and Nine)

Of bosom, there are two hundred and twenty styles, of buttocks, two hundred and eighty- four. I order. I know. I do my job (ibid).

Her navel is type sixty seven of two thousand, two hundred and thirty-four, the buried bald man.

To date I have catalogued twenty-five assorted dirt-pushers, nineteen unknowns, fifteen herdsmen, fourteen warriors, ten maids, nine seamstresses, seven bakers, six strumpets, five cooks, five members of the nobility or lugalling classes, three discoboli, three singers, three users of ink, two ferrymen, two flute players, two lace makers, two monarchs, two slaves... (ibid) .

The vase not only collects people but also gives them nicknames, underlying their distinguishing features of appearance: (Nose, Tatman, The Beard, The Chin, Perforation), character (Vote Now, The Champion), or peculiarities of behavior, (Wordless, Bloodsuckerissimus).

Such judgment from the side of inanimate object makes us, people, look critically at ourselves.

The vase differentiates a lot of coloures and hues: For irises, there are ten thousand, nine hundred and forty-nine principal hues. Rosa has mostly the grey I term mullet grey (ibid).

The vase declares that: The inanimate, with the help of night can move... (ibid).

The vase not only describes the events, but also philosophizes and predicts:

The check has surely cleared by now and Nikki is off to unpay more bills, to take perhaps a turn from betraying to being betrayed in her turn.

Prognostication: she will return to Market Harborough and close the circle ending up in the last place she expected. The back of Market Harborough is furthest away from its front (ibid).

Prognostication: this is the man Rosa will spend the rest of her life arguing with. In time they will speak of Nikki with fondness, the matchless matchmaker who gave them both a flat worth living in. They will be collaborators on the most chryselephantine pleasure.

Over the years he will annoy her by being late and then pretending when they arrive that it was Rosa's fault. When Lettuce marries he will vex Rosa by the stinginess of the wedding present he buys. Rosa's choice of candlesticks will infuriate him, as well as her harshness to spiders (ibid).

In contrast to the moving observers, who can choose and change their own position (perspective), object-narrators are stationary objects. They capture only what they see, giving the impression of a lack of integrity of perception of the world. Instead of a coherent picture of the life its fragments are portrayed. The author, hiding behind the mask of the vase-narrator, shows the impossibility of the object-narrator to tell everything in order, so it tells the story of the most memorable and noticeable events. The facts, events, phenomena, at first glance, devoid of logic, inconsistent, but united internally and inevitable are selected. In General, the narrative constitutes scattered impressions, meetings, conversations, monologues, dialogues. Fragmentary perception is reflected in the speech of the narrator due to the ellipsis: Everything. Been it. Seen it. Mean it (ibid).

At the same time, instead of the fullness of being vase's world is marked by "fragmentary existence" and "narrow observations". Despite the irony in the story, the vase - narrator understands perfectly well that readers may not perceive it as a person.

The same pattern is observed in bottle's narration (in Joanne Harris's novel "BlackBerry Wine"), who perceives the world through its darkened glass: Wrong again. Nothing. Harris J. (2001), Blackberry Wine : [novel], London : Black Swan, 334 p. Silence. (ibid). As it itself says: through a glass, darkly (ibid). The absence of indentation at the beginning of the chapters and at the beginning of the story contributes to the fragmentation of the description. It seems that the action starts in the middle. The story of the wine bottle begins with the statement that in its opinion, people know that the wine talks:

Wine talks. Everyone knows that. Look around you. Ask the oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holly fool. It talks. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great things, splendid plans, tragic loves and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It opens up summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places; every one, from the commonest Liebfraumilch to the imperious 1945 Veuve Clicquot, a humble miracle. Everyday magic, Joe called it. The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman's alchemy.

Take me, for instance. Fleurie, 1962. Last survivor of a crate of twelve, bottled and laid down the year Jay was born (ibid).

Color perception of the wine bottle-narrator is diverse: raspberry red, elderflower green, blackberry blue, rosehip yellow, dampsom black (ibid).

The lower biological entity and the object-narrators are peripheral characters. They cannot be active participants in the events due to their physical abilities (the woodworm beetle practically does not move, because it is a larva and sits in a wooden beam, and object-narrators are stationary objects) and act in the role of a witness to the events.

Thus, among the non-anthropological narrators the following anthropomorphic narrators (animals, lower forms of biological development, fantastic essence and objects-narrators) were singled out. The research showed that objects-narrators are peripheral characters. Their role status is the observers of the events.

The entrusted narration has the aim to entrust the story to such a narrator, who would be able to show the diversity of the world, to expand the reader's understanding of the surrounding reality. An important role in the creation of "ostraneniye" narrative belongs to such non- anthropological anthropomorphic narrators as: animals, lower biological forms, a fantastic entity, objects.

Giving the opportunity to tell the story to inanimate objects, the author pursues the purpose to avoid stereotypical perception of the world by the reader, to show the described reality in an unusual foreshortening.

The modern writer, understanding how complex the world is, seeks to portray it so as to overcome the stereotype of reader's perception. The implementation of the theory of "ostraneniye" allows going beyond the usual perception of the world.

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