The Crimean war of 1853–1856 in the modern British literature: evolution of the Russian myth

The article considers the problem of the emergence and development of images of Russia and Russians in the cultural consciousness of Great Britain in the period of the Crimean War of 1853–1856, which played an important role in shaping the national identity of the British through the opposition of “Our” to “Other”. Based on historical and literary analysis, the authors identify the basic components of the myth of Russia and Russians in British literature during the Crimean War: a hostile territory where three very different ethnotypes (Tatars, Cossacks and Russians) exist quite independently, the absolute tyranny of Tzar and the slavish essence of Russians. The created myth of the Crimean War justifies the imperial “moral interventionism” of Great Britain, which implies the protection of the weak from the strong and visually enshrined in the images of the Russian bear. The intensity of the negative assessment of Russia and Russians is dependent on the political situation, nevertheless, Sevastopol stands out in the space of the Russian myth and is represented as topos, which does not receive any negative assessment and evolves to the level of the core of the myth of Russia both past and present.

Reception of J. Austen’s creativity in Contemporary British Literature (Novel by Joe Baker “Longbourne”)

The experience of reception of creativity of J. Austen (1775—1817) in modern British literature is analyzed. The aim of the work was to identify the main directions and ideological and artistic functions of the deconstruction of pretext — the novel by J. Austen “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) — in the novel by Joe Baker (born in 1973) “Longbourne” (2013). It was revealed that the social, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-war, feminist components are the most significant in the deconstruction of pretext. For Baker, the main modes of rethinking the novel by J. Austen “Pride and Prejudice” become relevant in the modern social and cultural situation of revising the past and assessing the present in Britain, the problems of social contradictions, imperialism, colonialism and its consequences, the rights of women and minorities. It was concluded that in his artistic quest, Baker, although using the novel of the Regency era as a pretext, is moving closer to the neo-Victorian novel. It has been substantiated that it is advisable to clarify the definition of the “neo-Victorian novel of the younger generation” (the term by Y. S. Skorokhodko), designating works written in the pre-Victorian era, in particular, in the era of the Regency, as possible plot-forming pretexts, or to single out a new genre variety of British historiographic metanovel (L. Hutchen) — a Neo-Pre-Victorian novel.

POETIC STYLE OF RACHEL JOYCE’S SHORT STORIES

Статья посвящена исследованию поэтики «малой прозы» Рэйчел Джойс - яркой представительницы современной британской литературы. Автор статьи рассматривает художественные особенности семи рассказов из сборника «Заснеженный сад и другие истории» (2015). Сюжетообразующую роль в этих рассказах играет Рождество, что позволяет рассматривать их как проявление литературного архетипа «рождественского рассказа». Герои Рэйчел Джойс - «маленькие» люди, которые в канун Рождества оказались в сложной жизненной ситуации. Их частные истории о крахе и возрождении звучат на фоне предпраздничной рождественской суеты и всеобщего ожидания чуда. Используя сравнительно-сопоставительный и филологический анализ текстов рассказов, а также применяя методологию исторического и типологического подходов к рассматриваемым текстам, автор статьи выявляет и анализирует такие нарративные техники Рэйчел Джойс, как обращение к внутренней жизни и интимным переживаниям нестатусных героев; расширение границ жанра рассказа за счет взаимодействия с романной повествовательной формой; кинематографическая техника монтажа; иронические аллюзии на прецедентные тексты и явления массовой культуры; нарушенная хронология событий и преобладающее использование настоящего времени. Анализ поэтики рассказов Р.Джойс позволяет говорить о влиянии модернистских и постмодернистских эстетических традиций на жанр рождественской истории. The article is devoted to the study of the poetic style of “flash fiction” of Rachel Joyce, an outstanding representative of modern British literature. The author of the article analyzes the expressive manner and peculiarities of style of seven short stories collected in the book “A Snow Garden and Other Stories” (2015). The plot of these stories is centered on Christmas, which is reasonable ground to consider them as a manifestation of the archetype of a Christmas story, a long-standing literary tradition. Joyce’s characters are every men who found themselves in a difficult situation on Christmas Eve. Their private and intimate stories are told against the festive background and longing for a miracle. The comparative and philological analysis of Joyce’s short stories, as well as the methodology of the historical and typological approaches to the texts under consideration enable the author of the article to reveal and dwell on such narrative techniques in Joyce’s arsenal as addressing the inner life and intimate feelings of non-status characters; expansion of the genre of a short story through its interaction and contamination with the genre of a novel; cinematografic montage; ironic allusions to precedent texts and objects and phenomena of mass culture; distorted chronology of events and prevalence of the present tense. All these techniquestestify to the influence of modernist and postmodernist aesthetic traditions on the genre of a Christmas story.

Arnold Bennett

Virginia Woolf’s accusation that ‘Life escapes’ from the aesthetic horizons of Bennett’s fiction has long haunted his critical reception. Chapter 3 therefore turns to the function of description within realism, arguing that Bennett does not conceptually prioritize either the particulars, as Woolf argued, or the aggregated scene, as in Barthes’s ‘reality effect’, where the specificities of detail are secondary to its ideological function. The solid superficies for which Bennett has become infamous never constitute individual atoms of meaning, for he insists on both the particularity of a given scene and its transient coherence as a totality. This stereoptic effect mobilizes a searching scepticism as to reality’s appearances, which makes Bennett aim at what is at once both a more abstract and a more concrete notion of truth, one whose material manifestations carry with it the mark of its relation to a whole range of universal truths of which it is part. In this, Bennett acknowledges a debt to the ‘synthetic philosophy’ of Herbert Spencer. By examining more closely the influence of Spencer’s metaphysics on Bennett’s realist aesthetics, and focusing on Bennett’s novels together with his numerous critical writings, this chapter gives long-overdue attention to an often neglected figure in modern British literature.

WILLIAM GOLDING AS A MAN AND CREATOR IN ENGLISH WRITERS’ ESSAYS

This research is devoted to the interpretation of William Golding’s works by his younger contemporaries. The solution of this purpose allows to determine the significance of Golding’s novels in modern British literature and culture. The subject of our research is several essays such as David Lodge’s “William Golding” (1964), Ian McEwan’s “Schoolboys” (1986), John Fowles’s “Golding and 'Golding” (1986), Craig Raine’s “Belly without Blemish: Golding’s sources” (1986), Nigel Williams’s “William Golding: A frighteningly honest writer” (2012). Some of them present the memoirs, the others contain the literary critique. The analysis shows that Golding’s novels are seeing as extraordinary, original creations, as the beginning of a new tradition in the consideration of childhood and moral questions in the English literature. They mark the next stage in the history of the British novel, which is characterized by new plots, characters and motives.