THE SYNTAX OF INTERNAL MONOLOGUE IN A NOVEL BY L.N. TOLSTOY

Abstract

The article is dedicated to a theoretical understanding of the syntax of internal monologue in Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. The relevance of this study is determined by the increased interest in contemporary literary studies in forms of artistic psychologism, the subjective organization of narrative, and linguistic methods of representing the character’s inner world. The objective of the study is to identify and describe the main syntactic mechanisms of internal monologue, as well as to determine their role in expressing psychologism, subjective perspective, and the socially conditioned self-awareness of the character. The article examines internal monologue not only as a traditional means of psychological characterization but also as a unique syntactically organized form of artistic representation of consciousness. Particular attention is given to such features of inner speech as fragmentation, ellipticality, question-exclamatory organization, conjunctive, asymptomatic, and monosemantic constructions, and modal-evaluative richness. It is argued that these syntactic devices express not only the dynamics of the character’s mental life but also the processes of internalization of social, moral, and cultural norms.