theory of the novel

The paper aims to reveal the mechanisms of discursive disintegration in Georgi Karaslavov’s novel The Ordinary people (Obiknoveni hora, 1952–1975). According to the proposed thesis, the novel's ideological and compositional disorder is not an accidental example of the inapplicability of the social-realist method, but is due to the peculiar relationship between the individual features of the creative process and the demands of epic form as understood by the early György Lukacs. The methodological stake of this soldering is Radosvet Kolarov's concept of matrix and repetition functioning at the level of autotextuality. According to the thesis argued for here, the textual matrix that encompasses Karaslavov's work consists of two guiding principles that come into different relations according to the specific text: the principle of the documentary thought of as a marginal artistic objectivism, and the principle of the epic, thought of as an ideological treatment of the lived material. Hence the peculiarity of the epic form in the novel The Obiknoveni hora is interpreted as the result of the hypertrophy of the principle of the documentary, which seizes and thereby degenerates the epic functionality. The examples of discursive dissonance discussed serve to exemplify the consequences of the disintegration of epic form and the mechanisms of its reintegration within a post-epic structure.