Comparative poetics of modern political novel as a sub-genre of alternative history

Abstract

The subject of the study is the comparative genealogy and poetics of the political novel of the alternative history meta-genre in Ukrainian and Western European literature. The purpose of the article is to reveal the basic features of the political novel poetics as a subgenre of alternative history meta-genre and to implicate the Ukrainian novel, that belongs to mentioned sub-genre, to the contemporary Western European literature discourse by the way of comparative analysis. The subject of the study is the comparative genealogy and poetics of the political novel of the meta-genre of alternative history. The comparative and analitycal methods were used. The novelty of the work realizes as a structural comparative analysis of Ukrainian, German, British, Polish novels in alternative-historical genre in order to identify common and distinguishing features of the poetics novels of this genealogical variety. The Results of the Study revealed that novels of German, British, Polish and Ukrainian alternative history, written within the sub-genre of alternative-historical political novel, have distinctive features in the poetics, structural and compositional decision of the works. At the same time, affinity in the genre is observed style format, ideological-thematic focus of the works. O. Menshov’s novel “The Third Tertiary”, as well as J. Dukage’s novel “The Ice” are written within the framework of the artistic techniques of an adventure novel. Both novels have stylistic markers of a political novel and genre represent an alternative story. The distinctive features of these two novels are clearly visible at the linguistic, symbolic levels. The novel “Here Is He Again” by German writer T. Vermes’s appeals chronotopically to the “golden age of Germany” in the sense of consolidation of the German nation, leaving aside the ethical question of the influence of theories and practices of fascism in Europe. And O. Irvanets’ story “The Lviv Gate” is characterized by the same style features, though the ideological and thematic focus of both works concerns the search and revival of the national hero as the creator and preserver of the national idea. One of the most important characteristics of alternative history is pluralism. S. Fry shows it in his novel “How to Make History”. The novel focuses on the transition from the general to the local, that is, from history to story. Using the example of one family’s life, S. Fry demonstrates ways and specific algorithms for creating a great story. As S. Fry, Y. Shcherbak’s story in the novel “Chronicles of the Jaropol City” answers the questions about ways to create the History. The bifurcation point in the mentioned novel not only translates the real historicism of the novel into the field of alternative history, but also changes the polarity of the general emotional picture of the work from minor to major, allows to the author to describe, analyze and predict national Ukrainian history as an example of a section of historical and political life.