Article

Name: How many female characters in Bunin’s «Dark alleys»"?

Authors: M. Blinkina-Melnik

Abstract: Dark Alleys is a collection of short stories written by Ivan Bunin in France in 1937-49. This short story cycle consists of 40 stories (35 of which have a distinct narrative structure) and depicts 44 female characters. However, many of these characters bear a striking resemblance to each other, to the point that some of them are difficult to tell apart, which allows us to define 6 classes of characters based on their physical appearance. Besides, the characters who look alike also act in a similar manner which brings us to the conclusion, that the actual number of characters depicted by Bunin in this cycle is not 44, but 6, apart from some individ-ual variations. Furthermore, the narrative plots within the cycle are similar, which makes it possible to define a set of typical situations. There is a direct correlation be-tween the way each story evolves and the characters’ physical appearance: build and stature, hair and eye color. Based on this correlation, we can predict the story plot, given the characters’ appearance, and reconstruct characters’ physical traits which are not mentioned in the story, given the plot.

Keywords: Narrative Grammar, Text Linguistics, Narrative Model, Bunin, Dark Alleys

Bibliography:

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