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Harlequinade grotesque in Anglo-Saxon prose about the picaras // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2024. Issue 6 (236). P. 143-151

The article is devoted to the study of the harlequinade grotesque in works whose main characters are Anglo-Saxon picaras – Roxana from the novel of the same name by Daniel Defoe (“Roxana”, 1724) and Truman Capote’s character Ottilie from “The House of Flowers” (1950). The relevance of the study is due to the recent increased interest of literary scholars in the works of Defoe and Capote, as well as the stable appeal of foreign literary scholars to the interpretation of literary prose through the lens of the aesthetics of commedia dell’arte. For the first time, a comparison is made of the two picaras with their “progenitor” – Columbine from сommedia dell’arte, and parallels are revealed between the plot collisions in the prose of Defoe and Capote with the commedia and harlequinade plots. The typological similarity of Roxana and Ottilie with Columbine, as well as Royal Bonaparte and Roxanne’s husband with Harlequin is established. Allusions to mythological and theatrical plots in “Roxana” are identified, allowing us to talk about references in the text to the tradition of English pantomime, which synthesized mythology and harlequinade. Roxana is like the eternally young and beautiful Aphrodite, and her lovers – the brewer, the jeweler, the prince and the merchant – are endowed with the traits of Dionysus, Hephaestus, Adonis and Hermes, respectively. In “The House of Flowers” there are allusions to the Italian fairy tale “Prunella” and the commedia play by L. Houseman and H. G. Barker “Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden” (1906). In Ottilie’s features one can discern the Italian beauty Prunella, who defeated her evil witch mother-in-law, and Columbine with her “flower” name (a columbine is an aquilegia), and the image of Royal Bonaparte refers us to the handsome Bensiabel from “Prunella” and Harlequin. The terrible and the farcical are intertwined in the fate of Ottilie, which, as in the case of Roxanne, allows us to talk about the presence of harlequinade grotesque in the works of Defoe and Capote. The author of the article highlights such functions of this artistic technique as unfolding the metaphor of the world as theater and building a dialogue with the literary and theatrical traditions of the past.

Keywords: harlequinade grotesque, commedia dell’arte, English pantomime, picara, English literature, American literature, Defoe, Capote