Existentialism as the dominant component of the fictional reality in Colin Wilson’s novel «The mind parasites»: intertextual analysis

Abstract

Aim The article deals with the intertextual analysis of the fictional reality in Colin Wilson’s novel «The mind parasites». The aim of the article is to conduct the intertextual interpretation of the British author’s novel through the prism of existentialist philosophy represented in literature by Sartre’s and Camus’s works.

Methods In the article there have been applied several methods: the method of intertextual analysis has been used in order to discover what philosophical ideas of French writers’ found their ways in Colin Wilson’s novel; the typological method has been applied in order to research common and different features between Wilson’s, Sartre’s and Camus’s texts; the method of existential text interpretation has been used for characterizing the combination of theoretical existentialist ideas with their practical realization in the novel.

Results The article reports the result of the intertextual analysis of Colin Wilson’s novel «The Mind Parasites». Due to the analysis the main intertextual units, which make the existentialist reality of the novel more distinct, have been highlighted.

Scientific novelty Despite the number of foreign studies on Colin Wilson’s works, in modern Ukrainian literary criticism there is no thorough research on author’s novels and their intertextual component in particular. The article is aimed at the creation of the basis for the further research in this area.

The practical significance The article may be used for further studying of English literature of the XX century in the connection with existentialist philosophy. The results of the research may be useful for writing different qualification papers.