Illustration as a way of creating a cinematic effect in B. Akunin’s cycle of novels “Brüderschaft with Death”

Abstract

   The article discusses the functions of the illustrative corpus used to create a cinematic effect in Boris Akunin’s prose. The analysis shows that the illustrative corpus contributes to the establishment of the “cinematic novel” occasional genre invariant and the implementation of the literary cinematography principles in the text of the novels “Brüderschaft with Death”. The illustrations not only duplicate the visualizing function for the events described, but also provide additional semantics in the textual space. Through illustrations an analogue of a cinematic show is created, facilitated by the inclusion of the visual image of the author (Boris Akunin) in the role of the taper and / or banshi, as well as by consolidating the spatial dimension in the book. At the same time, the illustrations create a situation, which contributes to the inversion of the relation “text and image” with regard to the classical form of the literary work: thus, they affirm the “primacy” of the visual / cinematic code and the “inferiority” of the verbal one. In this way, the text of the cycle novels becomes an act of novelization of the visual and – more broadly – cinematic text. In addition, the illustrative corpus creates a situation (through the generation of an analogue of a cinematographic show), in which the book is seen as an analogue of the social practice of going to the cinema, that is, its reading becomes an act of overcoming space, a kind of its model.