Hypostatization of Phenomenal Images in the British Philosophical Novel of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

The article looks upon the formation and aesthetic organization of images in the philosophical novels by William Golding, Iris Murdoch, and Colin Wilson. The special subject matter of the study is hypostatization of images as a literary device for creating a picture of the world by means of reification of phenomena of consciousness on the empirical baseline of the reference objects. The study aims to identify the typological paradigm and individual methods of hypostatization in the works of the three writers in relation to the established epistemological principles and the relevant factors of historical continuity in the contemporary art of literature. A systematic approach to the actual contents and architectonic features of the novels enables to reproduce their consolidated model and to open a perspective for tracing sequential developments of the hypostatization concepts within the constituent genre structures. The first insights into the targeted perspective disclose the dependence of the phenomenal images of reality on the world outlook of the heroes who act as autonomous subjects of all figurative representations in the books by Golding, Murdoch, and Wilson. Further insights reveal the flaws and outgoings of this unlimited autonomy for the reason that the self-centered position of the subject would reduce the picture of the world to thought-to-be envisioning where phenomena of consciousness attained essential meaning and ontological significance without respect to objective reality. Setting the record straight on the strategic guidelines of the British novelists-philosophers leads forward from the problem stated to its compromised but effective solution. The latter relies on the discovery of the heroes’ inner motivations for seeking truth after the inevitable distraction of their phenomenal anti-worlds in collisions with the positive world of substantial reality. The analytical description of the characters’ advances along the ways of knowledge and experience opens access to parallel prefiguration of hypos-tatized phenomena оf mind into meaningful images reflecting empirical objects in their axiological significance for human life. The application of the category of hypostatization as an instrumental concept of research into the works of Golding, Murdoch, and Wilson enables to identify the specific features of their aesthetic systems as compared to those of modernized and traditional architectonics of the novel genre. The retention of the centralized status of the narration subject implies further setting of modernistic parameters for the whole system. However, the introduction of the traditional story line into the narration of the hero entails the development of the peripheral epic space where the hypostatized phenomenal images of subjective consciousness align with objective reality of human being in the world.

Keywords

Authors

References