THE SEMIOTIC AND AXIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF A THING IN BODO KIRCHHOFF’S “BOULEVARD NOVEL”

Abstract

The article examines the semiotic function of a thing in the work “Boulevard Novel”, the author of which, Bodo Kirchhoff, is one of the recognized masters of modern German prose, a prominent representative of the postmodernist school. The semiotics of things is closely interconnected with the axiological, value system of the artistic world, so both concepts are analyzed in their correlation. The image of the material world is conditioned by the author’s concept of artistic reality, representative of the philosophy and poetics of postmodernism. Published in 2002, the novel is a parody of the scandalously famous book by the authoritative master of realistic prose Martin Walser “Death of a Critic”. Taking as a basis the leitmotif of the story of an older colleague in the creative workshop (the murder of a literary critic), Kirchhoff substantively and stylistically clothes it in the form of a gangster detective story. The novel is intertextual, linked by indirect quotations to the works of other authors and to his own earlier texts. The author reproduces various aesthetic models and styles from traditional writing to a metagame with time layers, images and manners of representation, where the real competes with the fictional. Critics call the mixture of comedy, grotesque, caricature and satire in the novel a “literary delicacy”.