NARRATOLOGICAL APPROACH OF OTTÓ TOLNAI’S A TENGERI KAGYLÓ

Abstract

The question of alter egos and thus the localization of the narrators’ voices gives an exciting task to the readers of Ottó Tolnai. The paper focuses on Ottó Tolnai’s novel A tengeri kagyló, which, like others of his texts, carries the traits of fictive multiple authorship and emphasized live speech-likeness. While in some cases stamp collecting is a differentiation criteria, in this analysed novel the characters’ language use and vocabulary are of help in distinguishing them. The narrator identifies himself as a laic penner compared to the other characters and he constantly compares the phraseology of the others and his own, giving us almost more parallel texts. Narratological analysis focusing on the problem of the narrator thus necessarily operate with linguistic questions.