PRAGMATICS OF THE INITIATION NOVEL

Abstract

A type of literature that is intended for teenagers and young adults is the novel of initiation, which is a narrative about maturation, the process of growing up, the loss of innocence and the entry into the stage adulthood. These texts form a separate phenomenon of literature, which acts as a kind of “bridge” from children’s to adult reading and is characterized by a number of psychological characteristics, worldview aspects, a peculiar system of images and motives, themes, aimed at readers of adolescence. Modern literature turns to the ritual, borrowing certain elements of its structure and aesthetically interpreting them in a literary text. Initiation rites are intended to transfer an individual to another social and spiritual status, i.e. socialization, and therefore they are directly related to various rites of passage. Through the prism of cultural experience, an individual searches for his own outlook and value orientations, which will help him understand himself, the world around him, and his place in it. It is the initiation rite that is the tool for a young person helping to become a full-fledged member of society, performs certain roles. “Fusion of horizons” (term of H.R. Jauss) of the reading audience with the artistic content of modern literature implies that during reading the reader’s life situations are identified with the circumstances of the initiation rite of the heroes in initiation novels. This process makes possible a kind of initiation of the recipients of the texts, the result of which is an understanding of the modern social cultural situation, finding answers to questions about the meaning of human existence, gaining experience. In this sense, the reading process has an anthropological meaning, as it satisfies young people’s psychological needs for self-awareness, self-affirmation and self-realization in modern world. This is what defines the pragmatics of initiation novels.