TYPOLOGY AND FUNCTIONS OF ONEIRIC SPACE IN I.A. BUNIN’S EARLY PROSE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the typological analysis of the oneiric space in I.A. Bunin’s early prose. A review of literary studies is presented, dedicated to the problem of artistic hypnology. The descriptions of “classic” sleep, the “as if in a dream” situation, and the borderland between sleep and reality are analyzed in Bunin’s stories. The main functions of dreamy and dream-like reality are identified – psychological, meaning-forming, plot- and structure-forming, which indicates the special significance of spatial descriptions in the overall structure of the works examined. The functional-semantic approach to the study of a literary text’s spatial organisation, applied in this work, expands the possibilities of interpreting Bunin’s prose, contributing to a deeper understanding of it. The proposed method of analyzing the oneiric space will be useful in studying other works that describe the dreams or dream-like states of their characters.