The Theme of Self-Identification and Its Role in Arranging the Plot in P. Auster’s Novel “Moon Palace”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2026-3-87-98Keywords:
Paul Auster; “Moon Palace”; self-identification; chronotope of the path; narrative identity; postmodernism; identity crisis.Abstract
The article explores the theme of self-identification in Paul Auster’s novel Moon Palace (1989) as a system-forming principle of the work’s poetics. It analyzes the process of self-identification of the protagonist Marco Stanley Fogg as a sequence of identity crises organized around motifs of loss, journey, hunger, reading, and bodily exhaustion. The study reveals the role of the chronotope of the path as the center of plot organization, analyzes the relationship between performative, narrative, and existential identity, the interaction of vertical (lineage, cultural memory, history) and horizontal (social environment, cultural milieu, historical context) connections, describes narrative levels as a space for constructing the protagonist’s self-identity. The methodological framework includes comparative-historical, biographical, hermeneutic, and structural methods, along with theories of narrative identity (P. Ricœur), concepts of self-identity (S. P. Gurin, E. H. Erikson), and the idea of chronotope (M. M. Bakhtin). It is established that the protagonist’s self-identification appears as an open, processual, and unfinished structure that determines the composition, chronotope, and motif system of the novel, reflecting the postmodern transformation of the classic Bildungsroman.
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