PHOTOTEXTUALITY AS A PHENOMENON OF PRESENT-DAY BRITISH PROSE

Volha Sudliankova, Belarus, ID CLEaR2016-336;    Like many other  world  literatures the English literature of the last few decades has been marked by an intensive search for new narrative techniques, for innovative ways and means of  arranging a plot and portraying characters. Many present-day  English writers  turn to photography for the renewal of its sources and forms. The interaction of literature and photography has led to producing a hybrid, a ‘photo-literature’ or ‘phototextuality’. Suffice it to  cast a glance at several novels (e.g. The Dark Room (2001) by R. Seiffert,  The Rain Before It Falls (2007) by J. Coe, etc.) published round  the year 2000 to see that incorporation of photographic images into fiction allows writers to use new means of organizing  literary texts, to employ  non-conventional devices of  structuring a plot and  delineating personages as well as to pose various problems of aesthetic, ethical, ideological nature. A brief survey of the novels shows how popular phototextuality  is with contemporary writers, how diverse their ways and purposes of employing photography are.

Key words: English literature, narrative techniques, photography, phototextuality.