The Narrative of Epiphany in the Novels by François Mauriac and Iris Murdoch

The article develops the concept of “narrative epiphany”, which goes back to V.I. Tyupa’s narratology. This narrative is described as a variant of a narrative intrigue – the enigmatic intrigue of revelation with a particular “chain of clarifications, approximations, touching the content of life that is beyond human experience”. The author analyses the work of two writers – F. Mauriac and I. Murdoch to describe the religious and non-religious (secular) varieties of the narrative of epiphany. Besides typological similarities, The Sea, the Sea and Maltaverne: A Novel About a Young Man of Long Ago demonstrate genetic affinity. The comparative analysis allows the narrative of epiphany at all levels of the structure. Compositionally, it is characterized by the I-narrator of a twofold architectonic organization, when the work seems to be being written in plain view of the reader and appears to have already been completed, with the hero making his way to become a writer. Among other fundamental characteristics of the hero-storyteller are his confidence in his ability for insights and his power over souls and even the fate of other people, which is described as a kind of “witchcraft”. In terms of motives, the narrative of epiphany is characterized by the theme of the relationship between imagination and reality: the motives are verbal formulas of a cave, a tunnel, a crack, darkness, on the one hand, and light, the sun, an exit from darkness, on the other. There is also a motif of the atoning sacrifice, related to the turning point in the hero’s consciousness. The main plot collision can be described as self-deception of the protagonist, his false ideas about the meaning of his own life, and about relationships with others. The main event is related to the realization of previous illusions. The principal feature of the plot deployment of the narrative epiphany is the impossibility of “putting an end”, because the course of life appears as unstoppable, in spite of all the shocks and insights experienced by the hero, thus in the finale the horizon moves back again.