THE CHANGING CREATIVE PARADIGM IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL FICTION OF BRITAIN AND BELARUS

Abstract

The article is devoted to identifying the characteristic, universal features and tendencies in the poetics of the historical novel based on the works of contemporary Belarusian and British authors. The works by H. Mantel, J. Meek, A. Miller, A. Byatt, L. Rublevskaya, A. Fedorenko, O. Ipatova, V. Kovtun and others are used to demonstrate the changing cultural paradigm in the portrayal of the past. Various directions of the genre's development (neo-historical, postmodern, classical forms) are considered, the prerequisites for the increasing spread of elements of neo-romantic aesthetics in the works of various authors are highlighted as they manifest in the characterisation, the system of motives, and the type of conflict. It involves close examination of such symptoms of the changing poetics of the genre as the opposition of nature and civilization (urban space), of intellectual study of facts versus emotionally felt personal experience, the juxtaposition of the limited intellect and the mystical power of creative insight in comprehending the invisible interconnections of historical events. Special attention is paid to the themes of "love", "fear", "faith", which in their various manifestations become a means of remedying the imperfection of the world.