THE NARRATOR AND NARRATING STRATEGY IN SMOLLETT’S NOVEL ‘THE ADVENTURES OF FERDINAND, COUNT FATHOM’

Iryna Ruskykh

doi:10.23856/4206

Iryna Ruskykh Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8158-9747

Keywords: story teller, author, reader, framework components, narrative intonation, chapter headings

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate Smollett’s narrative strategy used in his third novel “The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom”. Despite the similarity to the previous texts, there is a certain novelty in “Ferdinand Fathom” which is connected with the narrative possibilities Smollett resorts to. Retaining the genre-forming motive of adventures, the special correlation between name and surname, Smollett changes the title of the novel, introduces composite and multi-level literary frame. It is the place where the reincarnation of the biographical author into his intratextual counterpart takes place. Smollett chooses a special narrator who is emotional, moralizing, full of naive pathos. He comments a lot, does not hide in the background, and is somewhat similar to the intellectual authors of Fielding and Sterne. He tells the story of an adventurous hero who is longing for destruction and enrichment. Designed to evaluate the hero’s actions, he becomes his memoirist.

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