Genre specifics of "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

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Genre specifics of "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Poltava State Agrarian University, Poltava, Ukraine

Tarasova Nataliia,

Candidate of Philological Sciences (PhD),

Poltava, Ukraine

Люлька В.М., Тарасова Н. І. Жанрова специфіка "Пригод Тома Сойера" Марка Твена

У статті проілюстровано, що "Пригоди Тома Сойєра" мають ряд ознак, характерних для роману як виду епосу: достатньо великий обсяг твору, епічність авторської розповіді, насиченість діалогами та монологами. Помічено, що сюжетна оповідь не настільки розгорнута, як у класичних зразках романів, хоча й має три сюжетні лінії. При цьому твір досить простий за композиційною будовою, а характери персонажів на момент розповіді вже майже сформовані. Хоча у "Пригодах Тома Сойєра" і розповідається про приватне життя головного героя у нерозривному зв'язку з життям суспільства, однак немає масштабності його зображення. У "Пригодах Тома Сойєра" виокремлено ознаки таких жанрів: 1) пригодницького - пригодницька тематика, насиченість сюжету незвичайними подіями та несподіваний їх поворот; наявність таємниці та двох груп персонажів - героїв і лиходіїв; 2) автобіографічного - конкретні факти біографії письменника, наявність у більшості персонажів реальних прототипів; 3) сімейно-побутового - автор торкається тем життя і побуту простого люду, стосунків у родині і в суспільстві, моральних цінностей та аморальних вчинків, навчання і виховання, дружби і кохання; 4) шкільної повісті - динамізм сюжету з життя школярів; зображення діяльності навчального закладу та учасників навчально-виховного процесу, дитячого життя у позашкільний час; 5) літературної пародії - схожість внутрішньої структури твору з "Дон Кіхотом" Сервантеса та головних героїв цих творів щодо їх життя за законами книг, а також пародії на авантюрні романи про розбійників через дитячу гру, на книги для недільної школи через образ "поганого хлопчика" Тома та на стосунки закоханих дорослих через закоханість Тома у Беккі; 6) гумористично-сатиричного - Марк Твен розглядає життєві реалії виключно крізь призму сміху, використовуючи різні засоби комічного - від легкої іронії до сарказму. Доведено, що "Пригоди Тома Сойєра" - пригодницько-гумористична повість і такий твір, у межах якого поєднуються ознаки кількох жанрів, - тобто поліжанровий. novel dialogues classic

Ключові слова: література, роман, повість, жанр, поліжанровість.

Liulka V., Tarasova N. Genre specifics of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

Keywords: literature, novel, story, genre, polygenre.

One of the best children's books is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Since its release, it has interested a wide range of readers, critics, scholars around the world, and to this day, interest in it has not been lost.

However, despite the large number of scientific papers devoted to the study of the life and work of Mark Twain, the creative heritage of the writer is still not fully studied. Although scientists comprehensively analyze the work of Mark Twain (M. Aloshyna, M. Bobrova, O. Hruzdieva, M. Yefremova, T. Mokhova, S. Ostapenko, A. Romm, D. Pianov, S. Skubina, I. Struk, etc.), today, there are many controversial issues, including the genre nature of some of the writer's works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

There is no unanimity among domestic and foreign literary critics about the definition of genre as one of the basic concepts of literary theory. Despite the significant number of scientific papers, the depth and diversity of research, the question of the semantic content of the category "genre" remains open.

The relevance of this study is due to the interest in the work of Mark Twain, the debatability of the concept of "genre" as a literary category, as well as the absence in modern literary criticism of works specifically devoted to the study of the features of the genre of the work The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The aim of the study is to identify and systematically analyze the features of the genre of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The aim is implemented in the following tasks:

- to explore various aspects of the interpretation of the concept of "genre", to determine the specifics of its semantic load as a literary category;

- to highlight the study of Mark Twain's work in literary criticism and criticism, outline modern approaches to its study;

- to identify the genre features of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

The object of research is Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The subject of research is the genre of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Research methods: the work uses structural, typological, comparative- historical, cultural-historical, comparative, biographical methods, as well as a systematic approach. Systematization of theoretical material on the problems of interpretation of the genre as a literary category is based on typological and comparative-historical methods. Understanding the genre nature of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its features is realized through a structural method and a systematic approach to the study of literary phenomena. The cultural-historical method was used to establish The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with the specific historical situation and level of culture of the American people in the period described by the author. The comparative method of analysis of a number of works of the writer allowed singling out the defining features of his individual style. The biographical method was used to determine the basis of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the peculiarities of Mark Twain's creative personality.

In this research, for the first time, a systematic study of the genre of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is carried out and its multi-genre nature is proved. A detailed analysis of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is carried out at the thematic, motive, figurative, plot-compositional, genre, and language levels. The theoretical significance of the study is to clarify the species and genre of the work The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; proposed its own approach to the definition of its genre.

The study of the genre as a literary category began quite a long time ago. Over time, the section of poetics - genre studies (genealogy) stood out, "the object of which is the genre and generic content of verbal art" (Kopystianska, 2005).

At the present stage, the scientific works of N. Bernadska, O. Halych, N. Kopystianska, T. Kushnirova, O. Nikolenko, N. Tamarchenko and others are devoted to the study of the content of the "genre" concept and its structural content. However, in modern literary criticism, the term "genre" has no unambiguous interpretation. The terms "type", "genre content", "genre form", "genre norm", "genre type" and others are often used to define it. According to T. Kushnirova, this is due to the fact that "researchers point to the vagueness of genre and genus categories. <...> Often in textbooks and critical intelligence, the term "genre" defines the genus ("lyrical genre"), type ("genre of the story") and variety ("epic drama") (Kushnirova, 2009, p. 108). In our opinion, such a discrepancy in the interpretation of the genre is also due to the fact that the term "genre" is translated from French as a genus and as a type.

N. Kopystianska's thorough research, Genre, Genre System in the Space of Literary Criticism, identifies four mutually conditioned spheres of genre: 1) genre as an abstract, general theoretical concept (novel, ballad, poem), which includes a set of stable genre features that become common for a certain group of works for a long time; 2) genre as a historical concept that is limited by time and literary space (Renaissance novel, fraudulent novel, romantic ballad); 3) genre as a concept that takes into account the specifics of a particular national literature (Russian realistic novel, Czech romantic ballad); 4) genre as a manifestation of individual creativity of the writer (Flaubert's novel, Chekhov's story) (Kopystianska, 2005, p. 32-33). In our opinion, this approach allows us to outline the full meaning of the term "genre", which is especially important in the classification of genres and the identification of genre varieties.

There are other definitions of the genre as a literary category. However, we share the views of those scholars who consider the genre in the unity of content and form and in terms of three-stage (three-member) division of literature. Therefore, we believe that the term "genre" should be used to denote subspecies (varieties), for example: genus - epic, type - novel, genre - adventure, autobiography, etc. Accordingly, the classification of genres should be carried out within each individual type.

Given the diversity of genres in modern literary criticism, there is no clear demarcation and classification. This is due to the fact that scientists ' attempts to systematize genres are based on certain factors. As T. Kushnirova notes, "some theorists distinguish genres according to their functioning in the historical process", dividing them into historical and philosophical (E. Lemmert) or historical and theoretical (Ts. Todorov) (Kushnirova, 2009, p. 109).

In modern literary criticism, there is no unanimous opinion on the definition of literary genre and genre, ie the type and variety of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In the study of the genre of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we take as a basis a three-level genus-genre classification (genus - type - genre) (Hromiak at al., 2006, p. 417). Since the genre is a lower order category and the classification of genres is carried out within each literary genre, it is first necessary to determine the type of the analyzed work.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is quite large (although this feature is quite relative). The author's story creates an imaginary world - the life of the small town of St. Petersburg, its inhabitants and stories from their lives. The work is full of dialogues and monologues (Twain, 2010). However, the work The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is quite simple in composition, the characters, including the main characters - Tom and Huck - at the time of the story are already formed, although in the course of events and undergo some changes.

As O. Halych notes, the novel "is based on the image of a person's private life in inseparable connection with social development" (Halych et al., 2001, p. 264). In our opinion, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer tells about the private life of the protagonist, which is inseparable from the life of society, embodied in the American city of St. Petersburg, but there is no scale of the image of society. Probably, this is due to the fact that, when telling about the lives and adventures of children aged 10-12, the author did not set himself such a task. Instead, "human destiny is revealed in the story, the hero's relationship with the surrounding reality" (Halych et al., 2001, с. 269). And this is what Mark Twain's work is all about: at the center of the representation, there is is the fate of an orphan boy raised in an ordinary American family of relatives, who protests in his own way against his aunt's excessive care, but tries to be polite and behaved; who childishly perceives the world around him, often brawls and does not always think about the consequences of his actions, but perceives the basic laws of social morality and seeks to live in accordance with them.

Mark Twain's work tends more to the literary form of the story, although the distinction between story and novel is not clear, especially because of the similarity "in subject and means of image, the disclosure of characters. But the story covers a smaller range of problems, a shorter period of the hero's life" (Hromiak et al., 2006, p. 554). Thus, among the issues raised in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we highlight the problems of childhood values and adult values, the relationship between parents and children and adults and children, the problems of friendship and mutual assistance. One of the characteristic features of the story, inherent in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is the open ending. Also note that the importance of the author's voice is important for the story. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the role of author- narrator is extremely important: he does not only retell stories that happened to the protagonist, but also comments on his actions, assesses social phenomena such as education, attitudes of ordinary Americans to religion and issues of racial discrimination. In part, his comments are full of humor, strong sympathy for the characters or sympathy for their suffering.

However, we will not limit ourselves to the definition of the literary genre of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as we believe that this work has pronounced genre features, in addition to several genres.

Upon careful reading of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, you can see that Mark Twain himself gives some clues to determine the heat of his work. Firstly, the title indicates that it will be about the adventures of the protagonist. This technique is designed to interest the reader, partially opening the theme of the work, it is well known in the literary tradition (for example, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe). Secondly, in the preface, Mark Twain notes that some of the adventures described actually took place, including with himself, which contains a hint of the work's autobiography. Thirdly, again in the preface, it is about the author's idea - entertain and cheerfully remind. Thus, the writer himself emphasizes the genre diversity of the work.

Following the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we also consider this work to be one in which the features of several genres are combined - that is, polygenre. However, in addition to the three Twain's "hints" singled out, we distinguish the characteristics of some other genres. Our opinion agrees with the opinion of the authors of the textbook World Literature, including the well-known scientist O. Nikolenko: "It is impossible to unambiguously determine the type of this story. The work can be called an autobiographical, adventure, family and school story. Undoubtedly, it is dominated by adventure elements, which is emphasized by the artist in the title of the work" (Nikolenko et al,, 2013, p. 190).

An important factor in the classification of genre varieties (according to Yu. Kovaliv) is the theme. One of the main themes of Mark Twain's work is the story of the adventures and friendships of ordinary American boys. At the epicenter of the adventure, of course, the protagonist of the work - Tom Sawyer, as defined in its very title. This gives good reason to attribute the analyzed work to the adventure genre. The defining feature of the adventure genre is the saturation of the plot with unusual events and their unexpected turn (Hromiak et al., 2006, p. 610).

To some extent, the children's games and entertainments can be considered adventures, including the escape of Tom and his faithful friends to Jackson Island to start a pirate life, as well as painting the fence, which filled Tom's pockets with real boyish treasures. After all, against the background of monotonous everyday life of a small town, these events were really unusual for the boys. As M. Bobrova notes, "the author intertwines the game and reality so subtly that it seems that the romance of adventure is born of children's passionate desire to experience the unusual. This makes the work internally integral and unique, gives a realistic style of romantic color" (Bobrova, 1962, p. 237-238).

Let's pay attention to the fact that it is traditional for the adventure genre to have a mystery. The main characters of the work, Tom and Huck, also have a secret, and moreover, not one. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is easy to distinguish the features of the autobiographical genre, in which "both the image of the protagonist and his plot - is an artistic treatment of the facts experienced by the author" (Hromiak et al., 2006, p. 606).

Mark Twain, as a well-known master of the artistic word, skillfully combined a wide range of themes in his work, most of which, by the way, are still relevant today. All of them are intertwined in the three-line plot we have already mentioned and in their own way are important for determining the genre of the work. Thus, the disclosure in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer themes of life and everyday life of ordinary people, relationships in the family and society, moral values and immoral acts, education and upbringing, friendship and love allows to refer the work to the genre of family and household story.

In our opinion, the work of Mark Twain has some features of such a genre as a school story. We can single out those stable components of this genre which makes it possible to attribute The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to them, namely: a dynamic plot from the life of schoolchildren; depiction of the activities of the educational institution and participants in the educational process, certain models of relations between them; taking events outside the school; depicting the home microclimate and leisure of the child. We should note that in the work of Mark Twain, they are closely intertwined.

One cannot ignore the fact that Mark Twain's work contains elements of literary parody. There are two views of parody as an artistic genre: on the one hand, parody "reproduces the dominant features of a particular genre or literary genre. Imitating the original, it preserves the first, images, stylistic constructions of his artistic system, which provides recognizability" (Volkov, 2001, p. 398); on the other hand, "imitates the manner of the writer in order to ridicule it as not appropriate for new artistic genres" (Hromiak et al., 2006, p. 398).

Analysis of theoretical works on the genre has shown that, despite the large number of scientific studies and their broad chronological boundaries, the semantic content of the category "genre" remains debatable.

However, we concluded that despite the large number of scientific and critical works on Mark Twain and the progress made in the study of his creative heritage, not all aspects of the writer's work are fully disclosed. We can state that in the modern literary space the question of the genre system of Mark Twain's artistic heritage and the genre of some of his works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, remains open.

Analysis of scientific papers devoted to the study of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer showed that the controversial issue of genre-species affiliation of the work due to the uncertainty of researchers on the meaning of "type" and "genre" and the presence of features of different types and genres. Our approach to solving this problem is based on a three-stage genus-genre division of literature, so the priority is to establish a literary genre of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and within the outlined type - its variety, the genre itself.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has a number of features that characterize the novel as a kind of epic. Among them we can single out a rather large volume of the work, the epicness of the author's story, the richness of dialogues and monologues. However, the plot story is not as detailed as in the classic examples of novels, although it has three story lines. The work is quite simple in compositional structure, and the characters at the time of the story are almost formed. Although The Adventures of Tom Sawyer tells of the protagonist's private life in inseparable connection with the life of society, there is no scale to his image.

Defining the genre of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we rely on our three author's hints on the adventure, autobiographical and humorous nature of the work and highlight the characteristics of these and other genres on thematic, plot-compositional, motive-image levels.

In general, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the following genres can be distinguished: 1) adventure - adventure themes, the saturation of the plot with unusual events and their unexpected turn; the presence of mystery and two groups of characters - heroes and villains; 2) autobiographical - specific facts of the writer's biography, the presence of most characters real prototypes; 3) family and household - the author touches on the life and everyday life of ordinary people, relationships in the family and society, moral values and immoral acts, education and upbringing, friendship and love; 4) school story - the dynamism of the plot from the life of school children; depiction of the activities of the educational institution and participants in the educational process, children's life in extracurricular activities; 5) literary parody - similarity of the internal structure of the work with Don Quixote by Cervantes and the main characters of these works about their lives according to the laws of books, as well as parodies of adventure novels about robbers through children's play, Sunday school books through the image of "bad boy" Tom and on the relationship of adults in love because of Tom's love for Becky; 6) humorous and satirical - Mark Twain considers the realities of life exclusively through the prism of laughter, using various means of comic - from light irony to sarcasm.

There is an obvious quantitative and qualitative advantage in Mark Twain's work of specific features of the story and genre-creating factors of adventure and humorous-satirical genres. This gives us reason to classify The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a an adventure and humorous story and a work that combines features of several genres, i.e. polygenre.

Список використаної літератури

1. Боброва М. Марк Твен: Очерк творчества. Москва: Гос. изд-во худ. лит., 1962. 504 с.

2. Волков А. Лексикон загального та порівняльного літературознавства. Чернівці : Золоті литаври, 2001. 634 с.

3. Галич О., Назарець В., Васильєв Є. Теорія літератури: підручник. Київ: Либідь, 2001. 488 с.

4. Гром'як Р.Т. Літературознавчий словник-довідник. Київ: Академія, 2006. 752 с.

5. Копистянська Н.Х. Жанр, жанрова система у просторі літературознавства. Львів: Паїс, 2005. 367 с.

6. Кушнірова Т. Інтерпретація категорії "жанр" у сучасному літературознавстві. Рідний край: альманах Полтавського держ. пед. ун-ту імені В.Г. Короленка. Полтава, 2009. Вип. 1 (21). С. 108-111.

7. Ніколенко О. М., Конєва Т. М., Орлова О.В. та ін. Світова література: підручник для 5 класу загальноосвітніх навчальних закладів. Київ: Грамота, 2013. 296 с.

8. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York : Library of America, 2010. 256 p.

1. References

1. Bobrova, M. (1962). Mark Tven: Ocherk tvorchestva [Mark Twain: Essay on creativity]. Moscow: Gos. izd-vo hud. lit. [in Russian].

2. Volkov, A. (2001). Leksykon zahalnoho ta porivnialnoho literaturoznavstva [Lexicon of general and comparative literature]. Chernivtsi: Zoloti lytavry [in Ukrainian].

3. 3. Halych, O., Nazarets, V., & Vasyliev, Ye. (2001). Teoriia literatury [Theory of Literature]. Kyiv: Lybid [in Ukrainian].

4. 4. Hromiak, R. (2006). Literaturoznavchyi slovnyk-dovidnyk [Literary dictionary-reference book]. Kyiv: Academy [in Ukrainian].

5. 5. Kopystianska, N. (2005). Zhanr, zhanrova systema u prostori literaturoznavstva [Genre, genre system in the space of literary criticism]. Lviv: Pais [in Ukrainian].

6. 6. Kushnirova, T. (2009). Interpretatsiia katehorii "zhanr" u suchasnomu literaturoznavstvi [Interpretation of the category "genre" in modern literary criticism]. Ridnyi krai: almanakh Poltavskoho derzh. ped. un-tu imeni V. H. Korolenka - Native land: almanac of Poltava State Pedagogical University named after V. G. Korolenko, 1 (21), 108-111 [in Ukrainian].

7. 7. Nikolenko, O. M., Konieva, T. M., & Orlova, O. V. et al. (2013). Svitova literatura [World literature]. Kyiv: Hramota [in Ukrainian].

8. 8. Twain, Mark. (2010). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Library of America [in English].

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