THE REPRESENTATION OF URBAN SPACE IN JOHN DOS PASSOS’S NOVEL MANHATTAN TRANSFER: ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ECOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The article explores the representation of urban space in the novel Manhattan Transfer by the prominent American modernist writer John Dos Passos (1896–1970). Published in 1925, the novel is recognized as one of the key works of early 20th-century fiction. Nevertheless, it has received relatively little literary critical attention, primarily within the framework of narratology and intermediality. The object of our research is the Ukrainian translation of the novel by Mariia Lysychenko, which appeared under the title Menhetten in early 1933, and was rendered in the orthography of the well-known 1928 Ukrainian spelling reform, free from artificially imposed russified norms. The aim of this study is to reframe the issues raised in the text from the perspectives of contemporary ecocriticism and literary anthropology. The settings of Dos Passos’s most famous novels are large American cities, primarily New York and Chicago. Yet the author may be regarded as an anti-urbanist due to his depiction of the drawbacks of metropolises in the early 20th century (the side effects of industrialization, the consequences of rapid technological progress, the widening gap between rich and poor, cultural crisis, overpopulation, appalling working conditions, loss of meaning in life and value orientations, etc.). The conflict between faith in progress and the fear of dehumanization was a central concern of modernist literature, and the embodiment of this dichotomy is also examined. Furthermore, the rapid development of cities gave rise to radical individualism, which was intensified by the confrontation with a new phenomenon – the «mass man». Based on the novel, the study demonstrates how the urbanized space of the metropolis swiftly absorbs and levels those who, with great effort and high hopes for a better life, arrived in New York. Special attention is devoted to the symbolism and function of colors, sounds, and smells, as well as the analysis of descriptions of urban landscapes and numerous natural objects.