The story of “Our Clan of the Fools” in parallel with the novel “The Lord”
Summary
Ala A. Kharatyan
Keywords – Hrant Matevosyan, M. Bakhtin, “Our Clan of the Fools”, fool, trickster, master, essence, collective memory, metaphor, discourse, text, metatext.
The article explores the development of the metaphor of the Fool in Hrant Matevosyan’s works. The metaphor of the Fool is interpreted as self-identity in “Our Clan of the Fools”. The article observes the transformation of the Fool into a cultural hero, in the context of the self-identity, which has brought to the perception of the character as the trickster mythologeme. The article has scrupulously shown that the carnival image, provided to the public, is only a surface of the Fool character. Another novel by the writer, “The Lord”, is analyzed as the sequel of “Our Clan of the Fools”, where the hero’s personality makes efforts to transform into master. According to Hr. Matevosyan’s concept, the Fool expresses the collective identity, he is a king player, the inverted king, not the king or the authority or the lord, but the artist. The peasant embodies the identity of “we” and the longing to become a king always makes the base of the existence of the Fool, who would never become a King or a Lord. The author comes to a conclusion that “Our Clan of the Fools”, as the recreated image of the history, is Hr. Matevosyan’s discourse about the history, where two different invisible formations and times are compared.