Harlequinade grotesque in Anglo-Saxon prose about the picaras
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2024-6-143-151
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
References:
1. Barker H. G., Calthrop D. C. The Harlequinade: An Excursion. Boston: Little, Brown, and company, 1918. 87 p.
2. Koenigsberger H. G. Early Modern Europe, 1500–1789. Longman, 1987. 343 p.
3. Kaler A. K. The Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine. Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1991. 215 p.
4. Gregg S. H. Defoe’s Writings and Manliness: Contrary Men. UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 208 p.
5. Richetti J. The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography. UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 432 p.
6. Novak M. E. Transformations, Ideology, and the Real in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Other Narratives: Finding “the Thing Itself”. University of Delaware Press, 2015. 239 p.
7. Minto W. Daniel Defoe. UK: Good Press, 2019. 204 p.
8. Prince M. B. The Shortest Way with Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Deism, and the Novel. University of Virginia Press, 2020. 350 p.
9. Bell I. A. Defoe’s Fiction. UK: Routledge, 2021. 212 p.
10. Seager N., Downie J. A. The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe. Oxford University Press, 2024. 720 p.
11. Bloom H. Truman Capote. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2014. 217 p.
12. Fahy T. Understanding Truman Capote. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. 200 p.
13. Balme C. B., Vescovo P., Vianello D. Commedia dell’Arte in Context. Cambridge University Press, 2020. 373 p.
14. Rudlin J. The Metamorphoses of Commedia dell’Arte: Whatever Happened to Harlequin? Springer Nature, 2022. 249 p.
15. Fava A. The Comic Mask in the Commedia dell’Arte: Actor Training, Improvisation and the Poetics of Survival. Reggio Emilia, Italy: ArscomicA, 2004. 236 p.
16. Rudlin J. Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. 282 p.
17. Sand M. The History of the Harlequinade. London, Martin Secker, 1915. 311 p.
18. Niklaus Th. Harlequin, or The Rise and Fall of a Bergamask Rogue. New York, George Braziller, 1956. 259 p.
19. Radulescu D. Women’s Comedic Art as Social Revolution: Five Performers and the Lessons of Their Subversive Humor. The USA: McFarland, 2014. 267 p.
20. Castle T. Masquerade and Civilization. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1986. 395 p.
21. Frost Th. The Old Showmen, and the Old London Fairs. London: Chatto & Windus, 1874. 388 p.
22. Crane J. Defoe’s “Roxana”: The Making and Unmaking of a Heroine. The Modern Language Review, 2007, vol. 102, no. 1, pp. 11–25.
23. Long R.E. Truman Capote: Enfant Terrible. A&C Black, 2008. 130 p.
24. New P. Why Roxana Can Never Find Herself. The Modern Language Review, 1996, vol. 91, no. 2, pp. 317–29.
25. Novak M. E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. Oxford University Press, 2001.756 p.
26. Voss R.V. Truman Capote and the Legacy of «In Cold Blood». University of Alabama Press, 2011. 246 p.
27. Defoe D. Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress: a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany Being the Person Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana in the Time of Charles II. London: Dent, 1998. 334 p.
28. Capote T. Tsvetochnyy dom [House of Flowers]. Zloy dukh [Evil spiri]. Moscow, B.S.G.-Press, 2005. 376 p. (in Russian).
29. Lang A. Traditional Folk Tales and Fairy Stories From Around The World. UK. 2006. 828 p.
30. Housman L., Barker H. G. Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden. Boston: Little, Brown, 1906. 89 p.
31. Capote T. The complete stories of Truman Capote. New York: Vintage International, 2005. 300 p.
32. Piskunova S. I. Smekh Servantesa i ritoricheskaya kul’tura yego vremeni [Cervantes’ laughter and the rhetorical culture of his time]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta – Bulletin of Moscow University, 2016, no. 6, pp. 65–84 (in Russian).
33. Danilkova Y. Y. Roman G. Grassa “Zhestyanoy baraban”: problema tipologii geroya [G. Grass’s novel “The Tin Drum”: the problem of the hero’s typology]. Novyy filologicheskiy vestnik – New Philological Bulletin, 2020, no. 2 (53), pp. 297–307 (in Russian).
( 477.87 kB ) 
( 473.69 kB )
Issue: 6, 2024
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD
Pages: 143 — 151
Downloads: 55