Stylistic polyphony in the literary text

The article examines the principles of stylistic polyphony, which find their original embodiment in a literary text. The most prominent means which create the polyphonic effect are stylistic heterogeneity, multiple points of view, multi-genre format, multidimensional space and time organization, intertextuality. The aim of this work is to study the specifics of stylistic polyphony, analyze its means of realization and resulting effect in literary texts, based on the novel «Cloud Cuckoo Land» by a contemporary American writer Anthony Doerr. The polyphony of the novel is complex and diverse due to the diffusion of linguistic, stylistic and literary forms. The peculiarity of this phenomenon in the novel lies in combination of all polyphony types: genre, compositional, stylistic, with a significant predominance of the latter. The chronotope of artistic worlds, the character image system, plot lines, genre and stylistic features are the markers of polystylistics in the work under investigation. All these elements of different text levels are distinguished by their diversity and heterogeneity: the novel contains the description of distant eras and geographical objects; portraits of dissimilar and unrelated characters acting in different, non-overlapping plots; intertextual references; different linguistic and stylistic techniques of storytelling. However, all these melodies are combined into a single polyphonic work and, despite the apparent heterogeneity, serve to express its main theme. The research methods were hermeneutic, stylistic, genre, structural, compositional, intertextual analysis of the literary text, which made it possible to identify the functions of stylistic polyphony in the work under study and interpret its key ideas. The study has demonstrated that with the help of stylistic polyphony, the author’s intention is realized in a special way; the variety of means emphasizes the significance of the novel’s message and enhances the impact on the reader.