Belarusian literature at the turn of the 20th21st centuries: Trends

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in Belarusian literature we can find the presence of some traditional trends, which evolved under the new conditions. The traditional literary trends were exhausted at the beginning of the 21st century, which was caused not only by aesthetic reasons, but also by historical and cultural. This article discussed the main themes of the Belarusian literature in the second half of the 20th century (country, military, historical), the image of the main character, the writers’ strategies and attitudes towards tradition. The Belarusian literature of 20th and early 21st centuries has many texts dealing with rural, military, historical and urban themes. But only the country theme has text-concentration (according to J. Borev, it is a text that may have nothing new, but it concentrates the national literary tradition on a certain theme), the absence of text-concentration is normal for the Belarusian urban prose, but is bad for the military and historical prose. This happened for non-literary reasons. The types of heroes (a romantic hero, hero-stoic, hero-slave) formed in the modern Belarusian literature) in some way correlated with the theme of the works and – much more – with the ideology of a certain literary generation. Having exhausted the possibilities of their heroes, writers elect other literary strategies. The tradition of the Belarusian literature is still untouchable: the older generation of the Belarusian writers is ready to receive or make it even in the decorative form, while the younger – to actively combat against decoration.