METAGENRE PARAMETERS OF FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION: NARRATIVE POLYPHONY IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S POOR THINGS

Abstract

The article examines the metagenre parameters of feminist science fiction based on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992), taking into account genre hybridity, intertextuality, narrative polyphony, and the specific modes of representing corporeality and female subjectivity. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of various genre codes – science fiction, the Gothic novel, the Victorian social novel, satire, and metafiction – which together form a multilayered textual structure. The aim of the study is to identify the specific features of metagenre functioning as a mechanism of textual organization that enables the interaction of diverse genre and narrative models within feminist science fiction. The research methodology is based on a combination of comparative, narratological, intertextual, and discursive analysis. The theoretical framework draws on literary theory, genre studies, feminist criticism, and poststructuralism, which make it possible to consider the text as a dynamic structure shaped through the interaction of multiple discursive practices. The scientific novelty lies in the comprehensive analysis of metagenre parameters as a defining feature of feminist science fiction. The study systematically explores the interaction of genre hybridity, the trope of the unreliable narrator, explicit intertextuality, and the multiplicity of narrative voices as interconnected mechanisms of meaning-making. It is concluded that the metagenre parameters in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things function as mechanisms for interpreting and reconfiguring literary and cultural models. Intertextuality and narrative polyphony reveal the constructed nature of each narrative perspective, while corporeality emerges as a discursively produced category. Thus, feminist science fiction can be understood as a metagenre that enables the rethinking of established models of knowledge, power, and subjectivity.