Character and time as semantic focal points of V. Kataev’s industrial novel “Time, Forward!”

Context and relevance. V. Kataev’s novel Time, Forward! is a complex literary text with a multi-layered and fragmented architecture. Objective. This article analyzes such conceptual dominants of the novel as character and time, which play an important role at both the formal and the semantic levels of the text. Hypothesis. The semantic analysis of the literary text makes it possible to identify a set of functions of subjective and historical time in the novel, to describe the means by which the narrative purpose and the effect on the reader are achieved, and to characterize the narratological and semiotic features of the selected temporal structures. Results. The conceptual field and semiotics of temporal structures in the Russian industrial novel reflect the ideology of Socialist Realism, the realities of the Soviet period, and the aesthetic of the era of industrialization, labor records, and technological progress alongside with the cautious warning about the utterly optimistic tone of ideal future of Communism. Conclusions. In addition to its cultural and historical context, as well as the canons and mythologemes of Socialist Realism, the industrial novel Time, Forward! captures an important code of the epoch: its features are present in the text in the form of themes, ideas, images, and artistic devices. This code becomes relevant in prose on later stages in the literary process development.

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