Strategies of personification of the image of London: From binary conflicts to systems
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2023-3(2)-234-241
Natalia Zelezinskaya
Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus
ORCID: 0000-0002-2018-1959
ABSTRACT
The article is devoted to the city of London as one of the main topoi of British literature. London acquires the status of a central image in the Victorian novel where its anthropomorphism is created by binary conflicts of richness and poverty, splendor and dirt, good and evil, etc. Victorians saw London as a city of contrasts. Contemporary citizens talk about it in terms of diversity and ambiguity. British literature has developed the image of London into complex entangled systems, which reflects the present-day collective sensitivity to subjective attitudinal ambivalence and multiplicity of correct opinions. The article contemplates the images of the biggest and the greatest, city on earth in London by E. Rutherford (1997), London: The Biography by P. Ackroyd (2000), and Capital by J. Lanchester (2012). All the novels proceed from the anthropocentric presuppositions, i.e. from the perspective of the new genre of an urban biography. An urban biography as a genre gives new potency to the axiological dimension of a literary work since it remodels the reader’s perception and estranges (defamiliarizes) the object whether it is the history, politics, or social processes of Great Britain. The British novels under consideration manifest various intentions of their authors, which results in different strategies of estrangement. The article observes a variety of means of constructing anthropomorphic structures of the novels: physiological personification in Ackroyd’s, a cultural-historical excursion in Rutherford’s, and a contemporary social snapshot creating a critical public sphere in Lanchester’s narrative. The tendency to transfer topoi into anthropomorphic images is explained by the trend toward general dehumanization in the posthuman era.
KEYWORDS: London, topos, anthropomorphism personification, dehumanization, cultural contexts, Peter Ackroyd, John Lanchester, Edward Rutherfurd
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Information about the author
Natalia S. Zelezinskaya
Dr. Sci. (Philology), Associate Professor at
the Foreign Literature Department
Belarusian State University
4, Independence Avenue, Minsk, 220030, Belarus
ORCID: 0000-0002-2018-1959
Web of Science ResearcherID: AAA-9591-2019
Scopus AuthorID: 57210103822
e-mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Zelezinskaya, N. S. (2023). Strategies of personification of the image of London: From binary conflicts to systems. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 3(2), 234–241. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2023-3(2)-234-241
