Linguistic Representation of Francoist Spain in H. de Montherlant’s Novel "Chaos and Night”
Henry de Monterlant’s novel “Chaos and Night” (“Le Chaos et la Nuit”, 1963) tells about the life of a native of Spain, who fled to France after the victory of the nationalists in the Civil War of 1936-1939. The paper shows two different images of Spain, one of which is real and correlates with the period of Francisco Franco’s stay in power, and the other exists only in the memories and the imagination of the main character. In this article, we aim to consider the main linguistic means used in the novel when depicting Spain both real and imaginary, as well as the self identification of the hero, who was never able to adapt to life in a different socio cultural environment. The main method of research is linguostylistic and linguocultural analysis of an artistic text. As a result of the study, we come to the following conclusions: 1) the novel “Chaos and Night” by H. de Monterlant shows the ethnocentrism of the main character, manifested through his complete self identification with the Spanish culture (which is native to him), rejection of the host culture (the French one) and refusal to integrate into French society; 2) the representation of Spain in the novel has a dual character: Spain is shown as existing only in the imagination of the hero, and as a real country, the collision with which causes the hero deep disappointment and, as a result, alienation from Spanish culture as a whole; 3) the novel also uses different linguistic means to convey two different images of Spain. Thus, the imaginary Spain is shown through antitheses, hyperboles, syntactic parallelisms, as well as numerous Hispanisms that the hero deliberately inserts into the French speech and which are absent when depicting Spain as a real one. Repetitions, metaphors, and periphrases are used to represent the real Spain what is less typical when describing imaginary Spain.