Groteska i pierwsza osoba

Abstract

The paper analyses the links between the literary grotesque and first-person narration. Except drama, it is the first-person fiction that affords most room for the grotesque. There are several reasons for such a close alliance between the two. The grotesque thrives on stylistic contrasts, parody, and other effects of this kind, which correspond with first-person narration's tendency to represent pragmatically engaged speech produced by a specific subject in a particular communicative situation. The grotesque as a rule needs a personalized point of view as a focus of observations and evaluations of its strangely distorted reality. In the first-person fiction this point of view is located in the consciousness of the narrating character. If the individualized narrator him/herself is invested with some highly odd characteristics, the grotesque reality around him/her can be understood as a projection of his/her peculiar, offbeat mindset or mental condition. Quite often he/she is the victim of some kind of exclusion (s/he may be, for example, a person suffering from an illness, an invalid, a madman, or a misanthrope) and his/her speech abounds in self-parodying linguistic clichés, stereotypes and ideological mantras. Moreover, grotesque third-person narratives tend to assimilate the style of first-person grotesque. The way of speaking of the their narrators or other characters often is highly personalized, taking the form of extended monologues or dialogues (in the latter case the linguistic contrast between the partners of the communicative exchange is usually matched by a character contrast, which can by typified by the juxtaposition of Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa). That being said, it is the first-person narrative that allows the literary grotesque to display all its techniques and appear at its best.