Abstract
The article deals with modern French-language literature on the loss of a person’s sense of happiness and harmony. The study authors explore the work of Western European novelists, who not only record the next decline of Europe but also try to return a sense of dignity to their fellow citizens. For centuries, literature has offered various forms of describing the uniqueness of human interaction with the world. If realism gives rise to a literature of explication that thinks aloud, and modernism tries to free the art of realists from layers of pretense, then the oppositional postmodern aesthetics proposes the so-called pluralism of reading practices, which frees both the reader and the literary critic from the need to search for forerunners and origins. Having experienced postmodern delight at the turn of the 21st century, the modern Western European writer en masse returns into the fold of realistic literature, in which a person is determined both socially and historically. At the same time, preference is given to documentary literature, which includes both memoirs, diaries, and essays, and the auto-fictional novel, known today as the “non-fiction” novel which has been in the focus of scholars’ attention for many years. Whatever forms modern literature may use to disguise itself, even if these forms are the most flowery, its main task is to describe a contemporary who lives with an inescapable feeling of the end of the world, trying to regain the meaning of life, to find footholds that are described in such detail by centuries of aesthetic practice. Therefore, the subject of the study is the classical categories: life, family, love, and peace of mind. The purpose of the study is to describe the current state of literature in Western European countries, identify the trends of its development and genre preferences of the experts of culture. The novelty of the study consists in the fact that the concept of “happiness” is investigated for the first time using the example of French-language literature, and the works of writers little studied in Russian criticism, such as A. Makine and Catherine Lovey, are introduced into academic circulation.
Highlights
At all times, art, reflecting the world around us, tried to explain the reasons for the dissatisfaction of a person whose ideal did not coincide with the real world
The main feature of modern Western European prose, without a doubt, is total pessimism because writers, at least in France, sense and predict the inevitable cataclysms that scientific and technological progress, pandemic, and migration have in store
Intense discussions on television and social networks have once again confirmed the idea of French writers that salvation lies in history and culture, that the French language can play a special role – the last thing that still allows us to speak of France as a great power. As it was during the Second World War with Vercors’ story “The Silence of the Sea”, which returned to France the feeling of its former greatness, today the revival of a sense of happiness is possible only based on a centuries-old culture, provided that many sacred values for the French have to be abandoned, those associated with freedom of speech
Summary
Art, reflecting the world around us, tried to explain the reasons for the dissatisfaction of a person whose ideal did not coincide with the real world. Writers try to reflect the new reality, either by directly transforming a fictional text into journalism or by looking for footholds in glorious history This was already the case in the 19th century, when romanticists, frustrated by new trends in politics, economics, and culture, turned their gaze to the distant and, as they imagined, heroic past, or when realists as social scientists described “social plagues”, actively participating in the political life of the country for the sake of their immediate elimination. Both movements always offered the reader a certain ideal that embodied possible harmony and happiness, even if this destroyed the artistic truth and the logic of character development. If the 19th century, especially its first half, as the Soviet critic wrote, was still a time that had “poetry of negative values” [1: 208], the turn of the century weakened the hope of finding happiness, and the 20th century with its world wars practically destroyed this poetry
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