INTRIGUE AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING THE PLOT LINE OF A ARTISTIC WORK

Abstract

The article dwells on a comprehensive understanding of intrigue as one of the central mechanisms of constructing a literary plot and forming sustained reader engagement. Within the scope of the study, intrigue is considered not as an episodic stylistic device, but as a multidimensional narrative category that integrates structural, semantic, pragmatic, and cognitive parameters of the literary text. Such an approach not only makes it possible to interpret intrigue as a dynamic principle of narrative organization, but also ensures the integrity of plot construction and the internal logic of narrative development. The aim of the article is to clarify the role of intrigue in structuring plot dynamics, organizing emotional tension, and modeling communicative interaction between the text and the reader. Particular attention is focused on analyzing how intrigue shapes reader expectations, regulates the distribution of narrative information, and directs interpretive processes throughout reading. Emphasis is placed on the active role of the recipient in meaning construction, since intrigue stimulates processes of anticipation, the formulation of interpretive hypotheses, and subsequent reinterpretation of the text. The methodological foundation of the study is formed by a combination of narratological, structural, reader-response, and cognitive-interpretative approaches, which enables the examination of intrigue as a processual phenomenon functioning simultaneously at the levels of compositional organization, semantic layering, and cognitive programming of reader perception. The article systematizes the main ways of realizing intrigue in literary prose, outlines its typological models, and identifies patterns of interaction between information concealment, temporal shifts, the rhetoric of expectation, and mechanisms of retrospective reinterpretation. It is demonstrated that intrigue not only ensures the progressive movement of the plot, but also retrospectively structures the text, forming the effect of multilayered and repeated reading. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the interpretation of intrigue precisely as a multicomponent narrative mechanism that accordingly integrates the dramaturgy of events with the reader’s cognitive activity, while the practical significance of the results is determined by the possibility of their application in literary theory, the analysis of literary texts, the teaching of narratology, and creative writing practices.