Grown-up narrator and childlike hero. An Analysis of the literary devices employed in Tolstoj's trilogy childhood, boyhood and youth.

I have attempted in this study to analyze the narrative structure of L. N. Tolstoj's trilogy Childhood, Boyhood and Youtlr, in which a first-person technique is used and the narrator relates his autobiography from the age of ten to that of sixteen. The special feature of this story is the fact that the child-hero - at least in the first two parts of the trilogy - cannot be considered capable of relating the story of his own development. The result is that an adult narrator, the older Irten'ev, tells the story, i.e. evokes the world of the child that he was. I have attempted to analyze the literary devices by means of which the story in which this special relation between narrator and hero is found, is told. ... Zie Conclusions