The functions of a historical narrative in contemporary fiction

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative study of the changing tendencies in the ways the key moments of national history are depicted in the works of contemporary British and Belarusian authors. The study is based on the works by H. Mantel, P. Akroyd, L. Daineko, L. Rublevskaya, Z. Kaminskaya. The article identifies the patterns of evolution of character types among writers of different generations. The idea of the cyclical development of history is used as a way of social commentary on contemporary social trends, for which history provides a much broader context and creative freedom. This is the reason, why the style of historical fiction of the recent decades is often defined as “allegorical realism”. At the same time the idea of history as a spiral, the way this idea is reflected in the texts, reveals the most acute traumatic episodes of the national past in the collective consciousness.